VALLEY CITY, N.D. (NewsDakota.com) – Valley City High School Senior Katy Meester was the 2020 local champion for Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest. Meester will advance to the state contest on February 24th at the North Dakota State Heritage Center in Bismarck to compete for title of North Dakota State Poetry Out Loud Champion. Each champion at the state level will receive $200 and an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, DC, to compete for the national championship, April 27-29, 2020. The school of the state champion will receive $500 for the purchase of poetry materials.

Poetry Out Loud is a national arts education program presented in partnership with the North Dakota Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation that encourages high school students to learn about great poetry through memorization, performance, and competition.

Poetry Out Loud uses a pyramid structure. Beginning at the classroom level, winners advance to a school-wide competition, and ultimately to the National Finals in Washington, DC. Since 2005, Poetry Out Loud has grown to reach more than 3.8 million students and 60,000 teachers from 16,000 schools in every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

To learn more about the North Dakota Poetry Out Loud contest, contact Rebecca Engelman, Arts in Education Director for North Dakota Council on the Arts at rengelman@nd.gov, 701-328-7593, or visit poetryoutloud.org.

By Kristi Shanenko

Above photo includes finalists: (L-R) Champion Katy Meester, Elizabeth Gazeley, Runner-up Sophie Boe and Ally Anderson.