Experience the power of poetry as Mississippi's brightest young voices take the stage.

Poetry Out Loud 2026.

Brought to you by the Mississippi Arts Commission.

Please welcome the Executive Director of the Mississippi Arts Commission, David Lewis.

On behalf of the Mississippi Arts Commission and our partners, the National Endowmentf or the A and Mississippi Public Broadcas Welcome to the 21st annual Mississippi Poetry Out Loud recitation Contest.

Poetry Out Loud is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with State and jurisdictional arts agencies.

This dynamic poetry recitation contest lifts poetry off the page, creating community and connection, and improves public speaking skills, builds confidence, and teaches about literary history and contemporary life.

In recognition of America's 250th celebration, today's recitations have been selected by the students from an anthology centered around this momentous and historic occasion.

Our contestants today competed against other school champions at one of three regional contests held across the state earlier this year.

The top three scoring students from each of the regional contests are competing today.

I congratulate all of the contestants on their achievement in reaching this stage of the contest.

Poetry Out Loud annually awards more than $100,000 to state and national level winners and their schools.

Our winner today will represent Mississippi in the national finals in Washington, D.C., competing for the grand prize of $20,000.

It is now my privilege to introduce our musical guest and the emcee for today's contest.

Our guest musicians today are singer-songwriter Rochelle Putnam and multi-instrumentalist Joey Etheridge.

This duo brings a rich musical history to the stage, blending Rochelle's original songs with timeless classics.

Their performances deliver a seasoned, unforgettable sound, bringing new life to songs you know and songs you'll come to love.

[applause] Our emcee today is Doctor Robert Luckett.

Doctor Luckett is a professor of history and director of the Margaret Walker Center and the Council of Federated Organizations Center at Jackson State University.

He is a Mississippi native, author, and notable civil rights historian.

Please help me welcome my friend, Doctor Robert Luckett.

[applause] Thank you, David.

Welcome, everyone, to the 2026 Poetry Out Loud State contest.

Scoring recitations is one of the most important and most difficult aspects of Poetry Out Loud contests.

Judges are asked to evaluate very different recitations, each displaying an impressive level of excellence, and they must decide how well students represent complex poems that may lend themselves to more than one interpretation.

The integrity of Poetry Out Loud rests on the work of the judges at every level of the contest.

And serving on today's panel of judges are poet, short story writer, print scholar, 2005 finalist for Mississippi Poet Laureate and instructor of English at Jackson State University, C. Leigh McInnis.

Oral Communications instructor, award-winning speech and debate and the coach of Mississippi's 2012 National Poetry Out Loud champion, Stacy Howell.

Author, producer and spoken word poet who brings a mastery of wordplay to the poetry experience, Steven Randle.

Writer, editor, founder of Rooted Magazine and deputy director of grants at the Mississippi Arts Commission, Lauren Rhoades.

And courtesy of the Mississippi Arts Commission, our accuracy judge is Leslie Barker.

Our score tabulators are Timothy Davis and Adrienne Domnick.

Our prompter today is Shannon Frost.

[applause] Poetry Out Loud recitations are scored in the following categories: Physical presence, voice and articulation, interpretation, evidence of understanding, overall performance and accuracy.

To view the full rules and process of scoring, you can use the QR code in your program, on the screen or visit: We will now begin round one of the 2026 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud recitation contest.

Our first contestant is Jiaxin Miller.

The fields are white.

The laborers are few.

Yet say the idle.

there's nothing to do.

Jails are crowded.

In Sunday schools, few.

We still complain there's nothing to do.

Drunkards are dying.

Your sons, it is true.

Mother's arms folded with nothing to do.

Heathens are dying.

Their blood falls on you.

How can you people find nothing to do?

Our next contestant, Emily Crouch.

All things within this fading world hath end.

Adversity doth still our joys attend.

No friends so strong.

No tie so dear and sweet.

But with death's parting blow is sure to meet.

The sentence past is most un-evocable, a common thing, yet oh inevitabl How soon, my Dear death may my steps attend.

How soont may be thy Lot to lose thy friend.

We are both ignorant.

Yet love bids me these farewell lines to recommend to thee.

That when that knots untied that made us one I may seem thine, who in effect am none.

And if I see not half my days that's due what nature would, God grant to yours and you.

The many faults that well you know I have let be interred in my oblivious grave.

If any worth of virtue were in me.

Let that live freshly in thy memory.

And when thou feelst no grief as I no harms.

Yet love thy dead.

Who long lay in thine arms.

And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains.

Look to my little babes, my dear remains.

And if thou love thyself or lovedst me.

These o protect from step Dame's And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse with some sad sighs honor my absent Hearse.

And kiss this paper.

For thy loves dear sake.

Who with salt tears this last Farewell do take.

Gianna Solari.

I shall return again.

I shall return to laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes.

At golden noon the forest fires burn.

Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies.

I shall return to loiter by the streams.

But bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses.

And realize once more my thousand dreams of waters rushing down the mountain passes.

I shall return to hear the fiddle and fife of village dances.

Dear delicious tunes that stir the hidden depths of a native life.

Stray melodies of dim remembered runes I shall return, I shall return again.

To ease my mind of long, long years of pain.

Next is Elayjah Earles.

(The dying words of Goethe) Light!

More light!

The shadows deepen.

And my life is ebbing low.

Throw the windows widely open.

Light!

more light!

before I go Softly Let the balmy sunshine.

Play around my dying bed.

Eer the dimly lighted valley I with lonely feet must tread Light!

more light!

for Death is weaving shadows around my waning sight.

And I fain would gaze upon him through a stream of earthly light.

Not for greater gifts of genius, not for thoughts more grandly bright.

All the dying poet whispers is a prayer for light, more light.

Heeds he not the gathered laurels fading slowly from his sight.

All the poet's aspirations center in that prayer for light.

Gracious Savior, when life's daydreams melt and vanish from the sight.

May our dim and longing vision then be blessed with light.

More light.

Mikayla Edwards.

I knew not who had wrought with skill so fi what I beheld, nor by what laws of art he had created life and love and heart on canvas for mere color, curve and line, silent I stood, made no move or sign.

Not with the crowd, but reverently apart.

Nor felt the power my rooted limbs to start.

But mutely gazed upon that face divine And over me, the sense of beauty fell as music over a raptured listener to the deep-voiced organ breathing out a hymn, or as on one who kneels his beads to tell There falls the aureate glory filtered through the windows in some old cathedral dim.

Next is Atheena Bloodgood.

Ah broken as the golden bowl!

The spirit flown forever!

Let the bell toll!

A saintly soul floats on the Stygian river and Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear?

weep now or never more!

See!

on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore.

Come!

let the burial rite be rea The funeral song be sung.

An anthem for the queenliest dea that ever died so young.

A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

"Wretches!

ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride, "And when she fell in feeble hea ye blessed her--that she died!

"How shall the ritual, then, be read?

the requiem how be sung "By you--by yours, the evil eye, by yours, the slanderous tongue "That did to death the innocent and died so young?” Peccavimus; but rave not thus!

And let a Sabbath song go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel so wrong!

The sweet Lenore hath "gone befo with Hope, that flew beside Leaving thee wild for the dear c that should have been thy bride.

For her the fair and debonair that now so lowly lies.

The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes-- The life still there upon her hair.

The death upon her eyes.

Avaunt!

to-night my heart is light.

No dirge will I upraise.

"But waft the angel on her fligh with a Pan of old days!

"Let no bell toll!

Lest her sweet soul amid its hallowed mirth “Should catch the note as it doth float up from the dam "To friends above, from fiends b the indignant ghost is riven-- "From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven-- "From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven."

Nita Hardin.

After the fierce midsummer, all ablaze has burned itself to ashes and expires in the intensity of its own fires.

There come the mellow, mild Saint Martin days, crowned with the calm of peace but sad with haze.

So after Love has led us till he tires of his own throes and torments and desires comes large-eyed friendship with a restful gaze he beckons us to follow across cool, verdant vales.

We wander free from care.

Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?

Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?

We do not wish the pain back or the heat.

And yet.

And yet these days are incomplete.

Sophie Mattingly.

The whiskey on your breath could make a young boy dizzy.

But I hung on like death.

Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans slid from the kitchen shelf.

My mother's countenance could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle.

At every step you missed my right ear, scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head with a palm caked hard by dirt.

then waltzed me off to bed, still clinging to your shirt.

Marcel Parry.

Lo!

t is a gala night Within the lonesome latter years An angel throng, bewinged, bedight In veils, and drowned in tears, Sit in a theatre, to see a play of hopes and fears, While the orchestra breathes fitfully.

The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on hig mutter and mumble low And hither and thither fly-- mere puppets they, who come and go At biddings of vast formless thi That shift their scenery to and flapping from out their condor wings.

Invisible Wo!

That motley drama—oh, be sure it shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore By a crowd that seize it not, through a circle that ever returneth in to the self-same spot, And much of Madness, and more of Sin, And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout, A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes f The scenic solitude!

It writhes!— it writhes!—with mortal pangs the mimes become its food And seraphs sob at vermin fangs and human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!

And, over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall, comes down With the rush of a storm.

While the angels, all pallid and wan Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, “M And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

[music] And this concludes round one of the 2026 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud recitation contest.

I'd encourage you to give these young people another round of applause.

[applause] Okay, we'll now proceed directly to round two.

During this round, we'll hear a second recitation from each contestant.

The first recitation in round two is Jaixin Miller, a senior at Biloxi High School.

What makes a nation's pillars hi and its foundation strong?

What makes it mighty to defy The foes that round it throng?

It is not gold.

Its kingdoms grand Go down in battle shock; Its shafts are laid on sinking sand, Not on abiding rock.

Is it the sword?

Ask the red dust Of empires passed away.

The blood has turned their stones to rust.

Their glory to decay.

And is it pride?

Ah, that bright crown has seemed to nations sweet.

But God has struck its luster down in ashes at his feet.

Not gold, but only men can make a people great and strong.

Men who, for truth and honors sake, stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while others sleep, who dare while others fly.

They build a nation's pillars de and lift them to the sky.

Next up is Emily Crouch, a sophomore at Regent School of Oxford.

And if my heart be scarred and burned.

The safer, I, for all I learned, The calmer, I, to see it true That ways of love are never new.

The love that sets you daft and dazed Is every love that ever blazed.

The happier, I, to fathom this: a kiss is every other kiss.

The reckless vow, the lovely name, When Helen walked for spoke the same.

The weighted breast, the grinding woe, When Phaon fled, were ever so.

Oh, it is sure as it is sad that any lad is every lad.

And what's a girl to dare implore her dear be hers forevermore?

Though he be tried, and he be bold and swearing death should he be cold, He'll run the path the others went.

But.

You.

My sweets are different.

Gianna Solari, a freshman at Rosa Scott High School in Madison.

I sought the wood in summer when every twig was green.

The rudest boughs were tender, And buds were pink between.

Light-fingered aspens trembled In fitful sun and shade, And daffodils were golden In every starry glade.

The brook sang like a robin.

My hand could check him where The lissome maiden willows shook out their yellow hair.

“How frail a thing is Beauty,” I said, “when every breath She gives the vagrant summer But swifter woos her death.

For this the star dust troubles, this have ages rolled To deck the wood for bridal And slay her with the cold.” I sought the wood in winter.

When every leaf was dead behind the wind whipped branches.

The winter sun set red.

The coldest star was rising.

To greet that bitter air.

The oaks were writhen giants; Nor bud nor bloom was there.

The birches, white and slender In deathless marble stood, The brook, a white immortal, slept silent in the wood.

“How sure a thing is Beauty,” I cried.

“No bolt can slay, No wave nor shock to spoil her, No ravishers dismay.

Her warriors are the angels That cherish from afar, Her warders people Heaven And watch from every star.

The granite hills are slighter.

The sea more like to fail.

Behind the rose the planet, The Law behind the veil.” Elayjah Earles, a senior at Mississippi School of the Arts.

Aunt Sue has a head full of stories.

Aunt Sue has a whole heart full of stories.

Summer nights on the front porch.

Aunt Sue cuddles a brown faced child to her bosom and tells him stories.

Black slaves working in the hot sun and black slaves walking in the dewy night, and black slaves singing sorrow songs on the banks of a mighty river.

Mingle themselves softly in the flow of old Aunt Sue's voice.

Mingle themselves softly in the dark shadows that cross and recross Aunt Sues stories.

And the dark faced child listening knows that Aunt Sues stories are real stories.

He knows that Aunt Sue never got her stories out of any book at all, but that they came right out of her own life.

And the dark faced child is quiet of a summer night listening to Art Sues stories.

Mikaylah Edwards, a senior at Meridian High School.

I put a bird in a cage, O fool that I am!

For the bird was Truth.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put Truth in a cage!

And when I had the bird in the cage, O fool that I am!

Why it broke my pretty cage.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put Truth in a cage!

And when the bird was flown from the cage, O fool that I am!

why I had bird nor cage.

Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put Truth in a cage!

Heigh-ho!

Truth in a cage.

Atheena Bloodgood, a senior at Pascagoula High School.

You who pass coldly by when the police rush upon us, When they wrench away our banners, Beautiful banners whose colors cry a demand for liberty.

You who criticize or condemn Declaring you believe in suffrage, worked for it in your state.

And your mother knew Susan B Anthony.

Can you think in terms of a nation?

Could you die or face ridicule for your belief?

For the freedom of women, for your freedom, we are fighting for your safety.

We face danger, bear torture for your honor endure untellable insult.

To win democracy for you, we defend the banners of democracy until our banners and our bodies are flung together on the pavement.

Waiting at the gates of government.

We have made of our weariness a symbol of woman's long wait for justice.

We have borne the hunger and hardship of prison to open people's eyes, to men's determination to imprison the power of women.

You women who pass coldly by, do you imagine your freedom is coming as a summer wind blows over fields?

Slowly it has advanced by a 60 Years war.

Those who fought in it have not forgotten.

And that war is not won.

Strongly entrenched, the foe sits plotting.

Close to his line our banners fly, signaling where to direct the fire.

Greater forces are needed, reserves and recruits.

Are you for winning or for waiting?

Women who watch the banners go d Women who say suffrage is coming while suffrage goes by you into Prussia.

A case to be content with, applauding speeches and praising politicians.

Patience is shameful.

Awake, rise and act.

Nita Hardin, a junior sponsored by Union County Heritage Museum.

Before man came to blow it right The wind once blew itself untaug and did its loudest day and night in any rough place where it caught.

Man came to tell it what was wrong.

It hadn't found the place to blow.

It blew too hard.

The aim was song and listen how it ought to go.

He took a little in his mouth, and held it long enough for north to be converted into south.

And then by measure blew it forth.

By measure.

It was word and note, the wind the wind had meant to be.

A little through the lips and throat.

The aim was song.

The wind could see.

Sophie Mattingly, a sophomore at Madison Central High School.

If I had known two years ago how drear this life should be, and crowd upon itself all strangely sad, mayhap another song would burst from out my lips, overflowing with the happiness of future hopes.

Mayhap another throb than that of joy.

Have stirred my soul into its inmost depths.

If I had known.

If I had known two years ago the impotence of love, the vainness of a kiss.

How barren a caress mayhap my soul to higher things have soarn nor clung to earthly loves and tender dreams.

But ever up aloft into the blue empyrean and there to master all the world of mind.

If I had known.

Marcel Parry, a sophomore at Jackson Preparatory School.

Whether awake or sleeping, I cannot rest for long by my casement comes creeping a distant song.

A song like the chiming of silver bells which the breezes play.

Seeming to float forever towards an unseen day: A song that is weary with sorrow.

Yet knows not any defeat through the past, through today, through tomorrow.

It echoes on life's long street.

Could I but make words of its power.

Bring it from the future here, men's souls would be waking that hour to the victory against fear.

But the vague sweet stanza befools me with its calm joy, time after time.

And no failure here ever schools me to cease an idle rhyme.

That music afar unspoken.

Tis I have done it wrong I caught, and I have broken, a distant song.

This concludes round two.

Let's have another round of applause for these incredible young people.

[applause] So much to be proud of here.

Now, while the tabulators are compiling the scores to determine who will advance to the final round, let's enjoy the music of Richelle Putnam and Joey Etheridge.

[music] It's time now to proceed to the final round of the 2026 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud recitation contest.

The scores from the first and second rounds have been tabulated, and the three highest scoring contestants will now have the opportunity to each recite a third poem.

The scores they earn in this round will be added to their standing scores, and will be used to select Mississippis Poetry Out Loud champion.

This individual will represent Mississippi in the National Poetry Out Loud contest to be held in Washington, D.C.

from April 27th to the 29th.

The contestants who will be reciting in round three, in alphabetical order, are Atheena Bloodgood, Elayjah Earles, and Nita Hardin.

Congratulations.

[applause] All right, now let's begin the third and final round of the 2026 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud recitation contest.

In alphabetical order, first up is Atheena Bloodgood at Pascagoula High School.

Conscience is instinct bred in the house, Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin with an unnatural breeding in an I say, Turn it out doors, into the moors.

I love a life whose plot is simple and does not thicken with every pimple.

A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it.

That makes the universe no worse than t finds it.

I love an earnest soul whose mighty joy and sorrow not drowned in a bowl, and brought to life tomorrow.

That lives one tragedy and not 70.

A conscience worth keeping.

Laughing, not weeping a conscience wise and steady and forever ready.

Not changing with events, dealing in compliments.

A conscience exercised about large things where one may doubt.

I love a soul not all of wood, predestinated to be good, but true to the backbone unto itself alone and false to none.

Born to its own affairs, its own joys and own cares.

By whom the work which God begun is finished and not undone.

Taken up where he left off.

Whether to worship or to scoff.

If not good, why then evil?

If not good god, good devil.

Goodness!

You hypocrite!

Come out of that.

Live your life.

Do your work, then take your hat.

I have no patience toward such conscientious cowards.

Give me simple laboring folk who love their work.

Whose virtue is a song to cheer God along.

Next is Elayjah Earles at the Mississippi School of the Arts.

Let no charitable hope confuse my mind with images of eagle and of antelope.

I am by nature none of these.

I was, being human, born alone.

I am, being woman, hard beset.

I live by squeezing from a stone the little nourishment I get.

In masks outrageous and austere The years go by in single file; But none has merited my fear.

And none has quite escaped my sm Our final recitation is from Nita Hardin with Union County Heritage Museum.

There is more glory in a drop of That shineth only for an hour, Than there is in the pomp of earths great Kings Within the noonday of their powe There is more sweetness in a sin That falleth from a wild birds At random in the lonely forests Than theres in all the songs that bards eer wrote.

Yet men, for aye, remembring Ca Forget the glory in the dew, And, praising Homers epic, let the larks Song fall unheeded from the blue [music] Special thanks to our incredible musicians Richelle Putnam and Joey Ethridge.

[applause] We're now ready to present our third and second place finalists and of course, our 2026 State Champion.

Like to have, I believe, David, join us on stage with our top three finalists entering the stage as well.

So please come join us.

[applause] Presenting this year's awards is David Lewis, Executive Director of the Mississippi Arts Commission.

The 2026 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud third place finalist is Nita Hardin.

[applause] [applause] The 2026 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud second place finalist will receive a $100 award, and their school or organization will receive a $200 stipend to purchase poetry supplies and materials.

The second place finalist is Athena Bloodgood.

[applause] And now the 2026 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud state champion and recipient of a $200 award and all expenses paid trip for two to Washington, DC and a $500 stipend for their school or organization, is Elayjah Earles.

[applause] [applause] Congratulations to our state champion and our finalists and all of our participants in the 2026 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud recitation contest.

You all did a wonderful job.

Thank you to our emcee, Doctor Luckett, and thanks to our musical guests, Richelle Putnam and Joey Etheridge.

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed to the success of Poetry Out Loud.

The teachers, the students, the parents, the clinicians, the coaches and the judges.

And to the schools and organizations that partnered with the Mississippi Arts Commission to bring the magic of poetry to the students of our state, including the Margaret Walker Alexander Center at Jackson State University, the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel, and, of course, our partners at Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

To register for the 2027 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud recitation contest, visit: Registration is open to schools and community organizations working with students in grades nine through 12 [applause] [music]