- [Narrator] Poetry Out Loud is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts, and supported locally by the Arts Education Program of NEIU, AIENEPA.

The project is funded by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Lackawanna County.

With additional generous funds by the Overlook Estate Foundation.

(upbeat music) - Good evening and welcome to the Poetry Out Loud Regional Competition.

I'm your host, Teresa Sabecky.

Poetry Out Loud is a national program from which high school students learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation.

One of the students here tonight will advance to the state competition in Harrisburg, and perhaps to the national finals in Washington DC, where they will compete for a grand prize scholarship.

Thank you to all the participating teachers throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania for holding their in-school competitions, and for generating enthusiasm in your students.

Our seven regional contestants are already winners, representing their own high schools.

They'll compete in three rounds.

Tonight's top three finalists will receive free tuition to the Lyceum School of the Arts.

But before we get started, I have someone to thank for making this great event possible.

Please welcome the Executive Director of the Northeastern Educational Intermediate Unit 19, Dr. Kathleen Sottile.

(audience applauds joyfully) - Good evening everyone, and it's an honor to be back here again this year in partnership with Arts and Education, NEPA, and to watch our amazing students perform their poetry tonight.

There are so many people to thank for this evening, but I would especially like to thank the teachers who spent so much time in coaching them, and working so hard with their students.

And it's a passion, and I give them all of the credit in the world.

I would also like to thank the districts that participated.

And tonight, especially, I would like to thank Dr. Catherine Richmond-Cullen.

When I think about the arts in education and I'm a former artist myself, I think, it's Dr. Catherine Richmond-Cullen, and it's the Arts in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

And it's synonymous.

And the work that she does in our region is unending, It's unbelievable, and she puts us on the map.

And tonight, especially, as not just the executive director of NEIU, but also as a resident of Lackawanna County, I think we need to give Dr. Catherine Richmond-Cullen a round of applause.

Thank you.

(crowd applauds joyfully) Thank you to WVIA in Lackawanna County, and everybody please enjoy your night.

Thank you.

- Thank you, Kathleen.

In this competition students will be judged on physical presence and posture, voice projection and articulation, appropriate gestures that enhance recitation, levels of difficulty, and evidence of understanding.

Please welcome our judges who are giving their time and talents so generously today.

Chris Esteves, former Poetry Out Loud state champion.

Jenny Hill, performer, poet, and PCA rostered artist.

Conor Kelly O'Brien, theater maker, actor, cultural organizer, and PCA rostered artist.

Our prompter tonight is Alicia Grega.

Alicia is a playwright, poet, PCA rostered artist, and an educator at Wilkes University, Lackawanna College, and the University of Cincinnati.

Judging accuracy is Dawn Leas.

Dawn is a poet and educator at Wilkes University.

And keeping tally is Stephanie Colarussa.

Stephanie is an art educator and PCA rostered artist.

And now on with the competition.

- Invictus by William Earnest Henley.

Out of the night that covers me, black is the pit from pole to pole.

I thank whatever God's may be for my unconquerable soul.

In the foul clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbound.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms, but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how straight the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate.

I am the captain of my soul.

(audience applauds joyfully) - Abandoned Farmhouse by Ted Kooser.

He was a big man, says the size of his shoes, on a pile of broken dishes on the side of the house.

A tall man too, says the length of the bed in an upstairs room.

And a good God-fearing man, says the Bible with a broken back on the floor below the window, dusty with sun.

But not a man for farming, say the fields cluttered with boulders, and the leaky barn.

A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall papered with lilacs, and the kitchen shelves covered with oil cloth.

And they had a child, says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.

Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.

And the winter's cold, say the rags in the window frames.

It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.

Something went wrong, says the empty house in the weed choked yard.

Stones in the field say he was not a farmer.

The still sealed jars in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.

And the child, its toys are strewn in the yard like branches after a storm.

A rubber cow, a rusty tractor with a broken plow, a doll in overalls.

Something went wrong, they say.

(audience applauds joyfully) - The Kiss by Robert Graves.

Are you shaken?

Are you stirred by a whisper of love spellbound to a word?

Does time cease to move 'til her calm gray eye expands to a sky, and the clouds of her hair like storms go by?

Then the lips that you have kissed turn to frost and fire, and a white steaming mist obscures desire.

So back to their birth, fade water, air, Earth.

And the first power moves over void and Earth.

Is that love?

No, but death.

A passion, a shout.

The deep in breath, the breath roaring out.

And once that is flown, you must lie alone.

Without hope, without life.

Poor flesh, sad bone.

(audience applauds joyfully) - The Tyger by William Blake.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat, what dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer, what the chain, in what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil?

what dread grasp.

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears And water'd heaven with their tears, did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night.

What immortal hand or eye, dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

(audience applauds joyfully) - The World is About to End, and My Grandparents are in Love by Kara Jackson.

The world is about to end, and my grandparents in love still living like they orbit one another, my grandfather, the planet, and grandma, his moon assigned by some gravitational pull.

They have loved long enough for a working man to retire.

Grandma says she's not tired.

She returns to her husband like a hymn, marks it with a color.

when the world ends will it suck the Earth of all its love?

Will I go taking somebody's hand, my skin becoming their skin?

The digital age is taking away our winters, and I'm afraid the sun is my soulmate.

That waste waits for a wet kiss, carbon calls me pretty, and I think death is a good first date.

I hope that when the world ends it leaves them be, spares grandpa and his game, grandma spinning corn into weight.

The two of them reeling into western TV, the theme songs louder than whatever is coming.

(audience applauds joyfully) - Self-Inquiry Before the Job Interview by Gary Soto.

Did you sneeze?

Yes, I rid myself of the imposter inside me.

Did you iron your shirt?

Yes, I used the steam of mother's hate.

Did you wash your hands?

Yes, I learned my hygiene from a raccoon.

I prayed on my knees, and my knees answered with pain.

I gargled.

I polished my shoes until I saw who I was.

I inflated my resume by employing my middle name.

I walked to my interview, early.

The sun like a ring on an electric stove.

I patted my hair when I entered the wind of a revolving door.

The guard said, "For a guy like you, it's the 19th floor."

The economy was up.

Flags whipped in every city plaza in America.

This I saw for myself as I rode the elevator, empty because everyone had a job but me.

Did you clean your ears?

Yes, I heard my fate in the drinking fountain's idiotic drivel.

Did you slice a banana into your daily mush?

Yes, I added a pinch of salt, two raisins to sweeten my breath.

Did you remember your pen?

I remembered my fingers when the elevator opened.

I shook hands that dripped like a dirty sea.

I found a chair and desk.

My name tag said my name.

Through the glass ceiling, I saw the heavy rumps of CEOs.

Outside my window, the sun was a burning stove, all of us pushing papers to keep it going.

(audience applauds joyfully) - Breakfast by Mary Lamb.

A dinner party, coffee, tea, sandwich, or supper, all may be in their way pleasant.

But to me, not one of these deserves the praise that welcomer of new-born days, A breakfast, merits; ever giving cheerful notice we are living another day refreshed by sleep, When its festival we keep.

Now although I would not slight those kindly words we use 'Good night', yet parting words are words of sorrow, and may not vie with sweet 'Good Morrow', With which again our friends we greet, when in the breakfast-room we meet.

At the social table round, listening to the lively sound of those notes which never tire, of urn, or kettle on the fire.

Sleepy Robert never hears Or urn, or kettle.

He appears when all have finished, one by one dropping off, and breakfast done.

Yet has he too his own pleasure, his breakfast hour's his hour of leisure.

And, left alone, he reads or muses, or else in idle mood he uses to sit and watch the venturous fly, where the sugar's piled high, clambering rocky cliffs of sweet delight.

(audience applauds joyfully) - And now onto round two.

- Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market by Pablo Neruda.

Here, among the market vegetables, this torpedo from the ocean depths, a missile that swam, now lying in front of me, dead.

Surrounded by the Earth's green froth, these lettuces, bunches of carrots.

Only you lived through the sea's truth, survived the unknown, the unfathomable darkness.

The depths of the sea, the great abyss, le grand abîme.

Only you, varnished, black-pitched witness to that deepest night.

Only you dark bullet barreled from the depths, carrying only your one wound, but resurgent, always renewed, locked into the current, fins fletched like wings in the torrent, in the coursing of the underwater dark, like a grieving arrow, sea-javelin, a nerveless oiled harpoon.

Dead, in front of me, catafalquing of my own ocean.

Once sappy as a sprung fir in the green turmoil, once seed to sea-quake, tidal wave, now simply dead, remains.

In the whole market, yours was the only shape left with purpose or direction in this jumbled ruin of nature; you are a solitary man of war among these frail vegetables, your flanks and prow black and slippery as if you were still a well-oiled ship of the wind, the only true machine of the sea: unflawed, undefiled, navigating now the waters of death.

(audience applauds joyfully) - Harold and the Purple Crayon by D. Gilson.

Berkeley psychologists told Harold his anger was justified.

What parents let their child go for a midnight walk under no moon?

I couldn't have been more than four, Harold told the doctor in her crisp beige office.

"Doctor, could it ever be okay for a four-year-old to eat nine different types of pie?"

"Call me Lisa", the doctor replied.

Everyone knew Harold could draw.

By sophomore year, he was critiquing grad students.

By 20, Harold knew exactly when to quote Sontag.

Standing in front of a professor's latest pastel of Mojave succulents: This just makes me think how in place of a hermeneutics, we need an erotics of art.

Harold's professors would hum and nod their dragon heads though none of them understood exactly what Harold said.

By senior year, Harold became distant, his work increasingly angry.

Apple trees, their fruit rotting in monochrome purple, under the notable lack of a moon.

(audience applauds joyfully) - Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, the shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; and bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

(audience applauds joyfully) - April Love by Ernest Dowson.

We have walked in love's land a little way, we have learnt his lesson a little while, and shall we not part at the end of day, with a sigh, a smile?

A little while in the shine of the sun, we were twined together, joined lips, forgot how the shadows fall when the day is done, and when love is not.

We have made no vows, there will none be broke.

Our love was free as the wind on the hill, there was no word said we need wish unspoke, we have wrought no ill.

So shall we not part at the end of day, who have loved and lingered a little while, join lips for the last time, go our way with a sigh, a smile?

(audience applauds joyfully) The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadswroth Longfellow.

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where.

For, so swiftly it flew, the sight could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air, it fell to earth, I knew not where.

For who has sight so keen and strong, that it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke.

And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.

(audience applauds joyfully) - Anthem For My Belly After Eating Too Much by Kara Jackson.

I look in the mirror, and all the chips I've eaten this month have accumulated like schoolwork at the bottom of my tummy, my belly a country I am trying to love.

My mouth is a lover devoted to you, my belly, my belly, the birds will string a song together with wind for you.

And your army of solids, militia of grease.

I step into a fashionable prison.

My middle managed and fastened into suffering.

My gracious gut, dutiful dome, I will wear a house for you that you can live in, promise walls that embrace your growing flesh, and watch you reach toward everything possible.

(audience applauds joyfully) - And now for our final round.

- In Praise of My Bed by Meredith Holmes.

At last I can be with you.

The grinding hours since I left your side.

The labor of being fully human, working my opposable thumb, talking and walking upright.

Now I have unclasped, unzipped, stepped out of.

Husked, soft, a be-er only, I do nothing, but point my bare feet into your clean smoothness, feel your quiet strength the whole length of my body.

I close my eyes, hear myself moan, so grateful to be held this way.

(audience applauds joyfully) - When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats.

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; how many loved your moments of glad grace, and loved your beauty with love false or true, but one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, and loved the sorrows of your changing face.

Bending down beside the glowing bars, murmur, a little sadly, how love fled and paced upon the mountains overhead and hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

(audience applauds joyfully) A Man's Requirements by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Love me sweet, with all thou art, feeling, thinking, seeing.

Love me in the lightest part, love me in full being.

Love me with thine open youth in its frank surrender; with the vowing of thy mouth, with its silence tender.

Love me with thine azure eyes, made for earnest granting; taking color from the skies, can Heaven's truth be wanting?

Love me with their lids, that fall snow-like at first meeting.

Love me with thine heart, that all neighbors then see beating.

Love me with thine hand stretched out freely, open-minded.

Love me with thy loitering foot, hearing one behind it.

Love me with thy voice, that turns sudden faint above me; love me with thy blush that burns when I murmur, "Love me."

Love me with thy thinking soul, break it to love-sighing.

Love me with thy thoughts that roll on through living, dying.

Love me when in thy gorgeous airs, when the world has crowned thee.

Love me, kneeling at thy prayers, with the angels round thee.

Love me pure, as musers do, up the woodlands shady.

Love me gaily, fast and true, as a winsome lady.

Through all hopes that keep us brave, farther off or nigher, love me for the house and grave, and for something higher.

Thus, if thou wilt prove me, dear, woman's love no fable.

I will love thee, half a year, As a man is able.

(audience applauds joyfully) - After the Winter by Claude McKay.

Some day, when the trees have shed their leaves and against the morning's white the shivering birds beneath the eaves have sheltered for the night, we'll turn our faces southward, love, toward the summer isle where bamboos spire the shafted grove and wide-mouthed orchids smile.

And we will seek the quiet hill where towers the cotton tree, and leaps the laughing crystal rill, and works the droning bee.

And we will build a cottage there beside an open glade, with black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near, and ferns that never fade.

(audience applauds joyfully) - The Rights of Women by Anna Lftitia Barbauld.

Yes, injured woman, rise, assert thy right.

Woman, too long degraded, scorned, opprest.

O born to rule in partial law's despite, resume thy native empire over the breast.

Go and in arrayed divine, like an angel's pureness that admits no stain; go, bid the man his boasted rule resign, and kiss the golden sceptre of thy reign.

Go, gird thyself with grace; collect thy store Of bright artillery that glances from afar; Soft melted tones, the thunderous cannon roars, blushes and fears thy magazine of war.

Thy right is empire, urge no meaner claim.

Felt, not defined, and if debated, lost like sacred mysteries, which withheld from fame, shunning discussion is revered the most.

(audience applauds joyfully) - Past-Lives Therapy by Charles Simic.

They explained to me the bloody bandages on the floor in the maternity ward in Rochester, New York.

Cured the backache I acquired bowing to my old master, made me stop putting thumbtacks round my bed.

They showed me an officer on horseback, waving a saber next to a burning farmhouse, and a barefoot woman in a nightgown, throwing stones after him and calling him Lucifer.

I was a straw-headed boy in patched overalls.

Come dark a chicken would roost in my hair.

Some even laid eggs as I played my ukulele, and my mother and father crossed themselves.

Next, I saw myself inside an abandoned gas station constructing a spaceship out of a coffin, red traffic cone, cement mixer, and ear warmers, when a church lady fainted seeing me in my underwear.

Some days, however, they opened door after door, always to a different room, and could not find me.

There'd be only a small squeak now and then, As if a miner's canary got caught in a mousetrap.

(audience applauds joyfully) - Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child, the Last of Seven that Died by Aphra Behn.

This silent little monument contains all that was sweet and innocent.

The softest pratler that ever found a tongue, his voice was music, and his words a song, which now each angel listening hears, such pretty harmonies compose the spheres.

Wanton as unfledg'd Cupids ere their charms has learned the little arts of doing harms.

The Seventh dear pledge that the Nuptial joys had given, toiled here on Earth, retired to rest in Heaven.

There which the shining angels fill, spread their gay wings beyond the throne and smile.

(audience applauds joyfully) - The judges have tallied their scores.

And now, for the winners and the recipients of three tuition to the Lyceum School of the Arts.

In third place is Benjamin Mulvey.

(audience applauds joyfully) The Poetry Out Loud runner-up is Dominic Huffman.

(audience applauds joyfully) And our winner for the Poetry Out Loud regional competition, and advancing to the state competition in Harrisburg is, Sulette Lange.

(audience applauds joyfully) Congratulations to our winners, and to all of the contestants for such a wonderful job.

A special thanks to the elite teachers and our judges, who certainly make this competition possible.

Thank you.

Of course, it is our pleasure to thank The Poetry Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

As well as Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Regional Director Dr. Catherine Richmond-Cullen.

And Executive Director of the Northeastern Educational Intermediate Unit 19, Dr. Kathleen Sottile.

The Overlook Estate Foundation, Lackawanna County Arts and Culture, and our partners, the Northeastern Educational Intermediate Unit 19, who made this broadcast possible.

WVI is proud to showcase the talented students of our region, and to provide quality arts, cultural programming, and educational services, all thanks to your support.

If your school didn't participate this year, but you would like to be part of Poetry Out Loud next year, please get in touch with WVIA, and we'll make sure you receive the necessary information.

I'm Teresa Sabecky Education Program Manager, and thank you for watching, and have a great night.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Poetry Out Loud is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts, and supported locally by the Arts Education Program of NEIU, AIENEPA.

The project is funded by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Lackawanna County.

With additional generous funds by the Overlook Estate Foundation.