Hey Purple Posse! Okay Okay, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. I haven’t posted anything in a while, okay a long while. But fear not loyal reader this time has not been completely wasted. I have had a couple of schemes brewing and I actually have some pretty exciting news. A few months back I heard all about Poetry Out Loud a national poetry recitation contest for high schoolers. It is a super cool program spreading all over the nation. The idea is to get high school students engaged in poetry while teaching and encouraging confidence and public speaking skills. It is set up like a spelling bee. You pick out a poem from the POL anthology and perform it in a classroom contest. The winner of that moves on to a school-wide competition then county, state, and finally, it narrows down to the national level with one student representing each state competing. So in review, we have a super cool contest all about poetry and performing! Guess how fast it took for me to sign up. Together me and a few friends set up our school’s very first Poetry Out Loud contest which was a lot of fun. There turned out to be a lot to it. Finding poems we liked, researching, memorizing and finally practice practice practice. Our English teacher (shout out to Mrs. Seeger she is the best) judged the competition. Unfortunately, I lost and that was the end of it all. Kidding! Yep, I won my school contest and got my official invite to compete at the County Poetry Out Loud Contest!

Part of prepping for this next level of the contest meant getting to work with a poetry coach Genesis. They actually used to be Ventura County’s Youth Poet Ambassadors just like me! I have learned so much from Genesis. They showed me different perspectives of my poems and really helped me perfect my performance from tone to gestures, and articulation. Still, even with the coaching, I was pretty nervous going into the contest. Luckily it all went pretty well. The judges were all really chill and nice. I loved hearing my competitors’ poems. The whole environment was really warm and encouraging because we were all just there to hear, talk, and celebrate something we all loved, poetry. Now for the question of the hour, DID YOU WIN!?! Well, you are just going to have to see for yourself.

Yep, I won first place. I have to say I was running on a victory high for like a week after that one. Even more exciting it means I qualify to go to the state competition. That’s right, Lili Lang is headed to compete at the California State Poetry Out Loud competition. Cue the band, balloons, and confetti poppers! Needless to say, I’m pretty excited. It’s not every day you get to compete against some of the best poets and performers in your state. So this weekend we are rolling out and headed for Sacramento, the state capital where the contest is being held. We are in for a jam-packed couple of days. I will compete in two rounds of competition, trying to qualify to be in the final round with the highest scorers. There we will see who will go on to represent California in the national POL Competition!

But don’t worry, I will be taking the Purple Posse with me. I’ve got my laptop packed and ready to go so you will be getting the latest as I make my way through this contest. And if you’re not already make sure to subscribe to The Purple Paragraph Newsletter because I’ll also be sending out a newsletter every day detailing this special event 

Below I have attached some links to the Poetry Out Loud Website if you want to check it out. They have a great database of poems and a lot of tips for performing too.

https://www.poetryoutloud.org

https://www.capoetryoutloud.org

Put in the comments any burning questions you have about POL and this upcoming contest. I’m happy to answer anything. Seriously, it’s the only thing I can talk about.