Valley City High School Announces Winner of Poetry Out Loud Contest

VCHS Poetry Out Loud 2021 Champion Lillian Kiefert

Valley, ND. Valley City High School announces their winner of the school level contest for Poetry Out Loud (POL) National Recitation Contest. The student winner, and 2021 St. Valley City High School POL Champion is Lillian Kiefert. Currently in 12th grade, Lillian will advance to the state level contest by submitting videos of three memorized poems selected from the official POPL anthology. A presentation featuring the top five finalists, and announcement of the new State POL Champion will be shared state-wide through social media and online on March 10th, 2021. Each champion at the state level will receive $200 and an opportunity to compete for the 2021 POL National Finals. The school of the state champion will receive $500 for the purchase of poetry materials. In order to ensure the safety and health of participating students and staff, the 2021 POL National Finals will be held virtually rather than onsite in Washington D.C. as previously planned.

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. POL uses a pyramid structure. Beginning at the classroom level, winners advance to a school-wide competition, then to the state competition, and ultimately to the National Finals in Washington, DC. Since 2005, POL 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 US Virgin

Islands.

To learn more about the North Dakota POL contest, contact Rebecca Engelman, Arts in Education Director for

North Dakota Council on the Arts at rengelman@nd.gov, 701-3287593, or visit poetryoutloud.org.