High school students from around Arkansas have been competing for this year’s Poetry Out Loud competition and the winners will see who is the best in the state when they compete for the state finals Friday, March 11 at 10 a.m.
The competition will be held virtually this year on the Arkansas Arts Council’s Facebook page. The overall Arkansas winner will have the opportunity to compete at the national level for a chance to win $20,000.
The 2022 participating schools are:
- Arkansas School For Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts
- Searcy High School
- Wonderview High School
- Arkansas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired
The host for this year’s state final competition is Kai Coggin.
Coggin is a published poet and author of four collections, most recently “Mining for Stardust” (Flowersong Press 2021). She is also a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, host of an open mic series Wednesday Night Poetry, and was recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award for Arts in Education.
This year’s competition will have four judges. They are:
Stacey McAdoo
Stacey McAdoo is the 2019 Arkansas Teacher of the Year and has 19 years of classroom experience advocating for traditionally underrepresented students. The award-winning Arkansas PBS docuseries Closing the Opportunity Gap and course Coaching Self Expression: Go-In Poet provide an intimate look at her relationship-based approach to nurturing students. As the founder of the Writeous Poets (a spoken word and youth advocacy collective) and a professional development facilitator, she designs and leads sessions that focus on arts integration, empowering student and teacher voices and promoting equity and the success of diverse learners.
Leron McAdoo
Also known as Ron Mc The HipHoptimist, is a nationally recognized spoken word poet, sought out personality, exhibiting professional artist, motivational speaker, actor, author and seasoned educator. In addition to being a lifelong community instructor in the Little Rock School District since 1994 and activist, he is a member of Phi Beta Sigma Inc. and the co-founder of Backyard Enterprises from 1992. He has participated in numerous programs and events that deal with the issue of race relations and urban needs, some of which include the Healing Racism Institute, Too Cool 4 School and the Kuumba Summer Art Academy. As a Hip Hop advocate and supporter, McAdoo uses the culture of Hip-Hop as a vehicle to educate both young and old in the fields of music, writing and art. Ron Mc has been a radio DJ (for 88.3, 98.9, and Power 92.3), co-hosted Art & Literature In Motion TV Show, created and hosted The Mind Blazin’ TV Show, engineered for the radio documentary “On The Line: Stories From Ninth Street,” produced radio programs (such as The Writeous Hour, Hope From The Hill, and The Skinny), facilitated educational workshops, and volunteered with several organizations such as The Women’s Project.
Stacy Pendergrast
Stacy Pendergrast, who obtained a master’s degree in special education from Rutgers University, spent a lifetime working as a public schoolteacher in New Jersey and then in Arkansas where she applied her master’s degree in special education from Rutgers University. She now works in her encore career as an education research coordinator for Arkansas PBS. On her journey to combine her loves of writing and teaching, Stacy earned an MFA in creative writing from Chatham University and has published work in a range of genres from memoir, book reviews essay, poetry, and her favorite art forms of haibun and haiku.
Jo McDougall
Jo McDougall was Poet Laureate of Arkansas from 2018-2021. She is the author of seven books of poetry and a memoir and was awarded the Porter Prize Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Her latest book of poetry is “The Undiscovered Room,” (Tavern Books). She offers a mentoring service for poets and memoirists. Having judged numerous poetry contests for universities and colleges across the country, she is happy to be a judge for Poetry Out Loud. She lives in Little Rock.
Poetry Out Loud helps students develop their oration, presentation and creative skills while also increasing self-confidence and instilling a love of poetry. Poetry Out Loud is a national arts education program that encourages youth to learn, appreciate and perform poetry.
A partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Foundation and the state and jurisdictional arts agencies, this program offers free educational materials and a dynamic recitation competition for high school students across the country.
For more information about Poetry Out Loud, contact Matt Boyce, arts in education programs manager, at [email protected].