2025 El Dorado County Poetry Out Loud

P2025 Poetry Out Loud El Dorado County Finals: Erin Levinson First Place, Amber Baker Second Place, Alivia Chen Third Place, and Kaitlin Fuller Fourth Place. Poetry Out Loud is a national poetry recitation competition for high school students. In El Dorado County, the competition is administered by Arts and Culture El Dorado in partnership with the California Arts Council. A vehicle for inspiration and instruction, Poetry Out Loud provides students with a variety of resources to help them memorize, interpret, and recite poetry, instilling in students not just an appreciation of poetry, but also a sense of accomplishment and confidence in their public speaking abilities.

The 2025 El Dorado County Poetry Out Loud Finals took place on Thursday, February 7 at Imagination Theater. The students' recitations were judged by a panel of respected community members:

• Stephen Meadows (Judge) - El Dorado County 2023-2025 Poet Laureate
• Amy Pooley (Judge) - Executive Director, El Dorado Community Foundation
• Lorin Torbitt (Judge) - Artistic Director, Imagination Theater
• Audrey Keebler (Accuracy Judge) - Educator
• Gavin Sellers-Norman (Tabulator) – Actor, visual artist, and educator
• Loren Christofferson (Prompter) – Artist and Administrative Coordinator at Arts and Culture El Dorador

Poetry Out Loud has a profound impact on the students who choose to participate. Beyond their exposure to a rich literary heritage, collected in the Poetry Out Loud anthology from which they select their poems, the students also get the opportunity to engage with poetry outside of the classroom, which situates the poems in a fresh, vibrant context. The act of recitation recasts poetry as an embodied art form rather than an abstract object of contemplation, igniting a lifelong passion for poetry in some students. As Lara Gularte says, “Poetry Out Loud encourages finding the voice of the poem, the meaning, sound, and the rhythm.”