I am growing tired and wary of being silent Like this is supposed to be normal, To be a meek and mild filed down to a dull edge.

No longer able to carve out my special place in this life of Obedience.

Cell phone clones, version of myself because Making noise is the distant yet intrusive truth telling cousin of chaos and defiance.

I dare not for a single second believe I am the first or the second and surely will not be the last to say these things, but I shall be made a martyr for daring to say these and those things in a manner such as this.

Now listen.

Have you ever heard silence like this?

Exactly.

You've never heard silence like that.

Edge of the folding chair in the old theater with itchy seats, Feet stuck to the floor on pins, needles, and princess' mattress piece anxiously awaiting my next word.

This silence is deafening.

This type of mind control, I mean crowd control can't be taught.

You Have to be born with this type of rare ink in your veins.

These young folks are tired of blazing trails quietly.

It is now time for them to close the windows to their souls, let Their hands flow freely towards eternal legacy and open their mouths so That words from the heavens may pour out and reign blessings on all those willing and unwilling to deal with their screams.

Will they whisper No longer Wait, no longer The crying, kicking and screaming of babes has ceased, But silence shall not be the end result.

They live.

These verses Love these Verses Layering lies and lines through movements as fluid, as hips, as they bachata the stars Today.

Today we shall bear witness to the moment that silence makes way for Chaos control through rhythm and rhyme.

This, This, This, This.

This Is poetry out loud On behalf of the Mississippi Arts Commission and our partners, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.

Welcome to the 20th Mississippi Poetry Out Loud recitation contest.

On this monumental year, we are excited to welcome our contestants, their teachers, their families, and a few of our former state champions.

Poetry Out Loud is the program of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation in partnership with state and jurisdictional arts agencies.

This dynamic poetry recitation contest is designed to improve public speaking skills, build confidence, and teach about literary history and contemporary life.

Today's recitations have been selected by the students from an anthology of over 1200 classic and modern poems.

Some of the works included in the anthology this year contained poems written by Mississippi writers such as Natasha Trethaway and Aimee Nezhukumatahil.

Our contestants today competed against other school champions at one of three regional contests held across the state in January.

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

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

Our winner today will represent Mississippi in the national finals in Washington DC where students compete for a grand prize of $20,000 in total poetry out loud annually awards more than $100,000 to state and national level winners and their schools.

Our guest musician today is Fifth Child Hailing from Jackson, Mississippi.

Fifth Child Blends southern bravado with thought provoking and soulful lyrics, which gives listeners mesmerizing rhythms to rock to and grow from at the same time.

Our mc today is Stephen Isaac Randall.

Stephen is a native son of Vicksburg, Mississippi and is currently a Mac roster artist.

He is a published writer and poet and a performer of spoken word.

We are honored today to have a prolific poet, wordsmith and public servant with us today.

Please help me welcome Steve Isaac Randle.

Thank you David and welcome everyone to the 2025 Poetry Out Loud state contest.

Scoring recitations is one of the most important and most difficult aspects of a poetry out loud contest.

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 portrait out loud rests on the work of the judges at every level of the contest.

Serving on today's panel of Judges are poet, short story writer, prince Scholar and instructor of English at Jackson State University, C Liegh McKinnis, oral communications instructor, award-winning speech and debate coach and the coach of Mississippi's 2012 National Poetry Out loud champion Stacey Howell, storyteller, author and mixed media artist, Diane Williams, assistant professor of Creative Writing and English at Jackson State University, Danielle Littlefield, behavior Technician and two time Mississippi State Poetry Out loud Champion Morgan Love and courtesy of the Mississippi Arts Commission.

Our accuracy judge is Kristen Brandt.

Our score Tabulators are Timothy Davis, Adriene Domnick and Maria Zerinque.

And our prompter today is Victoria Meek.

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, use the QR code on your screen or visit arts.ms.gov.

We are now ready to begin our 2025 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud Recitation Contest.

My name is Daniela Madamidola and I'm from Biloxi High School.

I chose Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost.

At first I chose it because it was a popular poem, um, but then as I dug deeper into it, um, I really liked it.

Um, it's something I can kind of, um, understand in a way if that made sense.

'cause I'm in theater so I know what roles I can take.

And then poetry is not that far from theater.

In some roles in acting, you can understand this character overall, like, oh, she's very sassy.

Oh, she's very shy.

But sometimes in poem it's like, oh, what is this character?

It might be one person, it might be two people, it might be an animal.

It can't be anything.

So that's why poem is a little harder in some way.

The first recitation is by Daniela Madamidola.

Acquainted with the Night by Robert Frost.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain and back in rain.

I have out walked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat and dropped my eyes unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet when far away and interrupted cry came over houses from another street, but not to call me back or say goodbye.

And further still at an unearthly height, one luminary clock against the sky proclaimed that time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Uh, my name is Saabria Prater and I'm from Pascagoula, Mississippi.

Some people think poetry is boring because they don't know how to read it, but if you hear it and it just feels, it gives you the same emotions as like a song or a movie.

This is not a small voice by Sonia Sanchez.

It really just like, it, it like hits me like right, like right in my vocal box I guess because I am really soft spoken and I sometimes I don't even notice how quiet I'm speaking.

Like at our regional competition, we had a mic and they thought the mic was messed up, but I was just whispering into the mic and yeah, so with the reiteration of this is not a small voice.

Yeah, it makes me feel like I have a voice.

And Sonia Sanchez, putting other people's voices out needs to be amplified.

The next contestant is Saabria Prater.

This is not a small voice by Sonia Sanchez.

This is not a small voice you hear.

This is a large voice coming out of these cities.

This is the voice of Latanya Kadeisha Shaniqua.

This is the voice of Antoine Darrell Shaquille running over waters, navigating the hallways of our schools spilling out on the corners of our cities and no epitaphs spill out of their river mouths.

This is not a small love you hear.

This is a large love, a passion for kissing learning on its face.

This is a love that crowns the feet with hands that nourishes conceives feels.

The water cells mends the children, folds them inside our history where they toast more than the flesh, where they suck the bones of alphabet and spit out closed vowels.

This is a love initialed with black genius.

This is a love colored with iron and lace.

This is not a small voice you hear.

I'm Sophie Mattingly from Rosa Scott High School in Madison.

I'm trying to get over a lot of social anxiety.

So what I usually do is, it sounds so basic, but deep breaths.

Um, my goal is just to take deep breaths and get on with it.

It's the Albatross by Kate Bass.

Um, I chose it because it kind of, it goes into a topic I'm really passionate about, like women in unhealthy marriages or unhealthy situations or just generally feeling like they're stuck.

Um, it really spoke to me because I've known some people in similar situations.

Um, so I just wanted to portray it as best as I could.

Next up is Sophie Mattingly, The Albatross by Kate Bass.

When I know you are coming home, I put on this necklace, glass speeds on a silk and thread of blue that use to match my eyes.

I like to think I'm remembering you.

I like to think you don't forget.

The necklace lies heavy on my skin.

It clatters when I reach down to lift my screaming child.

I swing her, roll her in my arms until she forgets the beads glitter and the flicker of a TV set as I sit her on my lap and wish away the afternoon.

I wait until I hear a gate latch lift, the turn of key and lock.

I sit amongst toys and unwashed clothes.

I sit and she fingers the beads until you speak in a voice that no longer seems familiar only strange.

I turn as our child tugs at the string and I hear a snap and a sound like falling rain.

My name is Nita Hardin and I'm from New Albany High School.

I round one poem is Part for the Whole by Robert Francis.

I feel like it exhibits a theme of contentment, which is something I feel like our world misses a lot today.

We're just focused on going and going and rushing through life that we, we don't sit back and just enjoy this part that we have for the moment.

I've done theater for a long time and so getting up there and reciting was a little more natural for me I guess, but it's also more personal than theater.

On theater, you're kind of just playing someone else and, uh, it's easier than standing up there and seeing people's faces and speaking a poem as yourself.

Our next contestant is Nita Harden, Part for the whole by Robert Francis.

When others run to windows or out of doors to catch the sunset hole, he's content with any segment.

Anywhere he sits from segment fragment, he can reconstruct The hole, prefers to reconstruct the hole as if to say, I see more, seeing less.

A window to the east will serve as well as window to the west.

For eastern sky echoes the western sky and even less a patch of light.

That picture glass happens to catch from window glass, fragment of fragment, flawed, distorted, dulled, nevertheless give something unglassed nature cannot give the old obliquity of art and proves part may be more than whole, least may be best.

My name is Aden Byrd.

I'm from Madison, Mississippi, but I come from Mississippi School for Math and Science, which is up in Columbus, Mississippi.

I think the most important aspect of Poetry out Loud is the fact that despite the fact that students don't write their own poems, they can find poems that can speak to them in a way that it doesn't speak to anyone else.

And so it's the personal level that these poems can touch people on.

That is really important.

So the reason I chose to do, I remember, I remember was I really like poems about memory and specifically ones that involve correct images.

Right?

Um, I'm an avid fan of Robert Frost, for example.

Uh, you can already tell if you've read some Robert Frost, that that is, this is a very image focused poet.

And so with, I remember, I remember Thomas Hood creates these images that all fit together for memory and then he kind of drops them and says, well, not anymore.

Next up is Aden Byrd.

I remember, I remember by Thomas Hood, I remember, I remember the house where I was born, the little window where the sun came peeping in at mourn.

He never came a wink too soon nor brought too long a day.

But now I often wish the night had born my breath away.

I remember, I remember the roses, red and white, the violets and the lily cups, those flowers made of light.

The lilacs where the robin built and where my brother set the laburnum on his birthday.

The tree is living yet I remember, I remember where I was used to swing and thought the air must rush as fresh to swallows on the wing.

My spirit flew in feathers then.

That is so heavy now.

And summer pools could hardly cool the fever on my brow, I remember, I remember the fur trees dark and high.

I used to think their slender tops were close against the sky.

It was a childish ignorance, but now it's his little joy to know I'm farther off from heaven than when I was a boy.

My name's Mikaylah Edwards.

I'm from Meridian.

I go to Meridian High School studying poetry and doing theater overlap a lot because the first thing you have to know how to do is how to speak in front of a large audience.

Since I'm a theater student, my main issue was I kept on doing the poems as if they were monologues.

So I started overacting them.

So what I mainly needed to focus on was making sure that I stood in place and making sure that I wasn't overdoing it and I want to perform the best way I can so they can see they can get basically what they came for.

Up next is Mikaylah Edwards.

Violins by Rowan Ricardo Phillips.

He never saw a violin but he saw a lifetime of violence.

This isn't to assume that if he had simply seen a violin, he would've seen less violence or that living among violins as as though they were landes or toppling stacks of other glazed goods like young adult fiction would've made the violence less crack and more cocaine, less of course and more why?

God.

Oh, why More of one thing doesn't rhyme with one thing A swill of stars doesn't rhyme with star, A posse of poets doesn't rhyme with poet, we are all in prison.

This is the brutal lesson of the 21st century.

Swilled like a sour stone through the vein of the beast that watches you while you eat.

Our eternal host, the Chummed Fiddler the Better tomorrow 2016.

My name is Collen Hooks and I am from Louisiana, but I live in Mississippi.

I live in Pass Christian.

So my first poem I chose because I just needed a quick poem to memorize for a grade.

My second poem I chose because I was talking to a girl that didn't go well, but I was talking to a girl.

And so that's, that poem's like about love for me.

It allows me to connect with people that like see the same interests as me and stuff like that.

But it also, I think it'll look really good on a transcript.

Our next contestant is Collen Hooks.

That's my heart right there by Willie Perdomo.

We used to say, that's my heart right there as if to say don't mess with her, right there as if Don't even play.

Oh, don't as if don't even play.

That's a part of me right there.

In other words.

Okay, okay.

That's the start of me right there.

As if come that day, that's the end of me right there.

As if push come to shove, I would fend for her right there as if come What may, I would lie for her right there as if come love to pay.

I would die for her right there.

My name is Archer Adams and I'm from Oxford, Mississippi.

My memorization technique used to just be read the whole poem, say it be done.

Now it's, I break it up into stanzas and I say each stanza and then I bridge it and then say the whole thing.

And it works a lot better and it brings more attention to certain lines that I have trouble with or that I want to pay more attention to.

Um, and that helps with getting me to slow down, take my time within the poem and figure out what words need to be enunciated, which words I need to focus on.

I just love poetry so much.

Last year I sort of discovered the magic of poetry and what it really is.

Up next is Archer Adams Invictus by William Ernest Henley Out of the night that covers me black as the pit from pole to pole.

I thank whatever Gods may be for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud under the bludgeonings of chance pants.

My head is bloody but un bowed beyond this place of wrath and tears looms, but the horror of the shade.

And yet the menace of the ears fines, 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.

Well my name is Libby Woosley and I am from Jackson Preparatory School.

So this is my first year doing Poetry Out Loud.

Um, it started in the classroom.

We had an assignment to learn just one poem and say it for the class.

And then we went to regionals with another five or so and the top three from that advanced here.

So my first poem is Siren Song by Margaret Atwood.

And I chose it because I'm a really big Greek mythology nerd.

Um, and so it's this story of a siren trying to lure this sailor onto the island.

She tries different tactics to figure out exactly what's going to like grab the mind of this sailor to lure him in.

And so I end up pulling like this very desperate tone of like, I'm hurt, like I'm wounded.

I am emotionally needing this help.

And then once the sailor has like that really kind, I want to help.

It's just like the I gotcha.

Next is Libby Woosley Siren Song by Margaret Atwood.

This is the one song everyone would like to learn.

The song that is irresistible.

The song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons, even though they see the beached skulls, the song nobody knows because everyone who has heard it is dead and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret?

And if I do, will you get me out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here squatting on this island looking picturesque and mythical with these two feathery maniacs.

I don't enjoy singing this trio fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you, to you only to you come closer.

This song is a cry for help.

Help me.

Only you, only you can.

You are unique at last.

A last, it is a boring song, but it works every time.

This concludes round one of the 2025 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud recitation contest.

We'll now proceed directly to round two during which we'll hear a second recitation from each contestant.

I just want to meet the people and see, um, what our differences are, uh, what I'm lacking, what I'm good at, what they're not good at.

So if I, if I want first place, that would be awesome.

But I came here to see the environment and to see what poems they chose and to see, um, what I can do to make myself better.

So I just wanna keep doing it and see my limits, how far I can go and how I can continue.

So that's one of the main reasons why I'm doing this again.

The first recitation in round two is by Daniela Madla, a senior at Biloxi High School.

300 Goats by Naomi Shihab Nye.

In icy fields Is water flowing in the tank?

Would they huddle together?

Warms, bodies pressing.

Is it the year of the goat or the sheep scholars depending Chinese Zodiac follower or leader.

O lead them to a warm corner.

Little ones towards bulkier bodies.

Lead them to the brush, which cuts the icy wind.

Another frigid night.

Super down.

Aren't you worried about them?

I asked my friend who lives by herself on the ranch of goats, far from here near the town of Oona.

She shrugs, not really.

They know what to do.

They're goats.

I've always enjoyed poetry and I took theater.

And our teacher, she made a class assignment just to like raise participation.

My teacher had like broke down how state worked.

And she was saying the first poem was like to kind of introduce yourself as a performer.

And the second one was like to just solidify this is me.

You're gonna make me, you're gonna rank me first, like I'm gonna be the state champion.

Next up is Saabria Prater, a senior at Pascagoula High School.

Things You May Find Hidden in my Ear by Mosab Abbu Toha for Alicia M. Quesnel, MD.

One.

When you open my ear, touch it gently.

My mother's voice lingers somewhere inside.

Her voice is the echo that helps recover my equilibrium.

When I feel dizzy during my attentiveness, you may encounter songs in Arabic.

Poems in English I recite to myself or a song I chant to the chirping birds in our backyard.

When you stitch the cut, don't forget to put all these things back in my ear.

Put them back in order as you would do with books on your shelf.

Two.

The drones buzzing sound, the roar of an F 16.

The screams of bombs falling on houses, on fields, and on bodies of rockets flying away.

Rid my small ear canal of them all.

Spray the perfume of your smiles on the incision.

Inject the song of life into my veins to wake me up gently beat the drum so my heart may dance with yours.

My Dr. Day and night Like I thought I knew everything about the things that I, that these poems are about.

I thought that I had a set opinion on everything and I'm very stubborn.

Um, so I was very surprised when I started second guessing some things that I feel and, and some things that maybe I wasn't certain about are more clear in my head.

Now.

Next up, Sophie Mattingly, a freshman at Rosa Scott High School in Madison Siren song by Margaret Atwood.

This is the one song everyone would like to learn.

The song that is irresistible.

The song that forces men leap overboard in squadrons even though they see the beached skulls, the song nobody knows because anyone who has heard it is dead and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret?

And if I do, will you get me out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here squatting on this island looking picturesque and mythical with these two feathery maniacs.

I don't enjoy singing this trio fatal and valuable.

I will tell this secret to you.

To you only to you.

You are unique at last.

Alas, it is a boring song but it works every time.

My round two poem is, uh, When, in Disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes by William Shakespeare.

I feel like it relates with, I don't know, just the high school culture a lot.

It's just if you think down on yourself and like, oh, I wish I could be this person or like just I, I'm not in a good place right now.

I think everybody struggles with that and especially in high school.

And so, uh, yeah, he points to that in his poem.

I like his rhyme scheme.

Some of the modern poems have no rhyme scheme.

I think you have to be really smart to write in rhymes.

Next up is Nita Harden, a sophomore at New Albany High School.

Sonnet 29.

When in disgrace with fortune and Men's Eyes by William Shakespeare.

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone be weep my outcast state and trouble death heaven with my boot list cries and look upon myself and curse my fate wishing me like to one more rich in hope.

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, desiring this man's art and that man's scope with what I most enjoy contented least yet in these thoughts myself almost despising happily I think on thee.

And then my state, like to the lark at break of day arising from soul and earth sings hymns at Heaven's Gate for thy sweet love.

Remembered such wealth brings that then I scorn to change my state with kings.

For round two I chose One Art by Elizabeth Bishop.

It's definitely one of the more iconic ones of the pair.

I chose it for a very similar reason as the first it has to do with memory.

But the difference between that and I remember, I remember is that it can be performed very differently.

And I think that being able to perform them very differently is a key to getting better scores.

With judges, you don't want two performances that are exactly the same.

And if you have two poems that are very similar in that regard, it's hard to set them apart.

And so with one art you have a more upbeat, um, regretful tone that is underlying when I remember, I remember is has the regret at the forefront.

Next up is Aden Byrd.

A senior at Mississippi School for Math and Science.

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day except the fluster of lost door keys.

The hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster places and names and where it was you meant to travel.

None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch.

And look my last or next to last of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones and vast some realms.

I owned two rivers a continent.

I missed them.

But it wasn't a disaster even losing you.

The choking voice a gester I love, I shouldn't have lied.

It's evident the art of Losing's not too hard to master though it may look like write it like disaster.

Poetry matters to me because from a young age I've always loved writing and creative expression.

And I feel like in schools in our world in general something like that hasn't really been like pushed as much as it should be.

I really want that to be pushed more because a lot, a lot of kids don't have a way to express themselves outside of anything like, like technology, stuff like that.

I feel like creative expression is one of the best ways like therapy and just feeling heard and noticed and expressing yourself.

Next, Mikaylah Edwards, A junior at Meridian High School.

Songs for the People by Francis Ellen Watkins Harper.

Let me make the songs for the people.

Songs for the old and the young songs to stir like a battle cry wherever they are.

Sung not for the clashing of saber for carnage nor for strife but songs to thrill the hearts of men with more abundant life.

I would sing for the weary am Mid life's fever and fret to heart shall relax their attention and care.

One browse forget.

Let me sing for the children before their footsteps.

Stray sweet anthems of love and duty to float over life's highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged when shadows stemmed their sight of the bright and restful mansions where there shall be no night.

Our world so worn and weary needs music pure and strong to hush the jangle and discord of sorrow, pain and wrong music to soothe all its sorrow to war and crime shall seize and the hearts of men grown, tender girdle the world with peace.

One thing I do is I just clear my head.

I imagine I'm not even there like I imagine I'm in a full white blank room on.

And I also have to like use every bit of my willpower to make sure my legs stay planted.

But I was super nervous 'cause normally I can just look into the lights and I don't have to see the people.

But I could.

There were no bright lights so I couldn't look into the lights.

So I was looking at all these people just staring at me.

So I completely messed up on my first poem somehow I'm here.

Next up is Collen Hooks, a freshman at St. Stanislaus High School Across the Bay by Donald Davie.

A queer thing about those waters.

There are no birds there or hardly any.

I did not miss them.

I do not remember missing them or thinking it uncanny.

The beach so-called was a blinding splinter of limestone.

A quarry outraged by hulls.

We took pleasure in that.

The emptiness, the hardness of the light, the silence and the water stillness.

But this was the setting for one of our murderous scenes.

This hurt and goes on hurting the venomous soft jelly, the undersides.

We could stand the world if it were hard all over.

I chose, I felt a funeral in my brain.

I don't know, I fell in love with it.

I've always loved Emily Dickinson.

Everything that I want to do for an audience is to bring this poem to life and show them this is what this poem is.

And I want them to feel that poem with everything that I have and everything that I feel about the poem.

So for I felt a funeral in my brain, I'm trying to bring this story to life and I'm trying to show them, hey, this is what all of this feels like.

Watch it as it's happening.

Next up is Archer Adams, a sophomore at Regent School in Oxford.

I felt a Funeral, in my brain.

(340) by Emily Dickinson.

I felt a funeral in my brain and mourners to and fro kept treading.

Treading till it seemed that sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated a service like a drum kept beating, beating till I thought my mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box and creak across my soul with those same boots of lead again.

Then space began to toll as all the heavens were a bell and being but an ear and I and silence some strange race wrecked solitary here.

And then a plank in reason broke and I dropped down and down and hit a world at every plunge and finished knowing then I've always been very competitive.

Everything's a competition from how fast can you get through dinner to how many math problems can you get right on this quiz, whatever.

So I've done math competitions and theater competitions and so it's just like this competitive drive that like pulls me in.

And that's what really also brought me further into the world of poetry because I love music and poetry is the words of music.

But adding the competitive aspect was the push for me to like look into the meanings of the words and how the tone affects the meaning and really just made poetry mean much more to me.

Our next contestant, Libby Woosley, a junior at Jackson Preparatory School Echo by Daryl Hine Echo that loved hid within a wood.

Wood to herself, rehearse her weary.

Woe, oh she cried.

And all the rest unsaid, identical came back and sorry, echo.

Echo for the fix that she was in invisible, distraught by mocking passion, passionate, ignored, as good as dumb.

Employed that oh unchanged in repetition.

Shun love.

If you suspect that he shuns you, use with him no reproaches whatsoever ever you knew supposing him to know, no melody from which you might recover Cover your ears.

Dear echo, do not hear Here is no supplication but your own.

Only your size return upon the air.

Air their music from the mouth be gone.

The scores from the first and second rounds have been tabulated.

And the three highest scoring contestants will now 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 Mississippi's poetry out loud.

Champion this individual represent Mississippi in the poetry out loud national finals contest to be held in Washington DC from May 5th through the seventh.

The contestants who will be reciting in round three in alphabetical order are Nita Hardin, new Albany High School, Sophie Mattingly, Rosa Scott High School, Saabria Prater Pascagoula High School.

Congratulations to our finalists.

Now let's begin the third and final round of the 2025 Mississippi poetry out loud recitation contest.

It is an honor to be here and I'm very excited to represent and maybe have the opportunity to represent Mississippi nationwide.

Uh, but I'm just so happy to be here with all of these talented students and hear everyone else's poems and just celebrate literature 'cause it's awesome.

First up is Nita Hardin Eagle Plain by Robert Francis.

The American Eagle is not aware he's the American eagle.

He is never tempted to look modest.

When orators advertise his virtues, he is not listening.

This is his virtue.

He's somewhere else.

He's mountains away.

But even if he were near, he would never make an audience.

The American Eagle never says he will serve if drafted, will dutifully serve, et cetera.

He is not at our service if we have honored him.

We have honored one who unequivocally honors himself by overlooking us.

He does not know the meaning of magnificent.

Perhaps we do not all together either.

Who cannot touch Him.

I feel like through poetry people can express what maybe wouldn't people wouldn't bat another eye at if they were just to say it straightforward.

And so when people find new ways to make people think and make people feel, it's more likely to get people to listen.

Next is Sophie Mattingly Thoughtless cruelty by Charles Lamb.

There Robert, you've killed that fly.

And should you thousand ages try the life you've taken to supply you cannot do it.

You surely must have been devoid of thought and sense to have destroyed a thing which no way you annoyed.

You'll one day ruin it.

T butterfly, perhaps you'll say that's born in April, dies in May.

That does.

But just learn to display his wings one minute and in the next is vanished quite a bird, devours it in his flight or come a cold blast in the night.

There is no breath in it.

A bird that seeks his proper food And providence whose power indu that fly with life when it thinks good, may justly take it but you have no excuses for it.

A life by nature made so short.

Less reason is that you for sport should shorter make it a fly.

A little thing you rate.

But Robert, do not estimate a creature's pain by small or great the greatest beings can have but fibers, nerves and flesh.

And these the smallest ones possess although their frame and structure less escape our seeing.

I chose Nothing to Do by James Ephraim McGirt.

I needed to pick a free 20th century poem.

I was looking through them all.

Well not all of them 'cause I got very bored really quick.

'cause you can only read whom and thou so many times before you like give up.

And so I was like, let me find a black poet, like let me see what I can do with what I'm given.

And it just like, it feels so like current and it's just like a lot of the, some of the poets on the site, they may be deceased or like they may have like published their works at a time where they weren't allowed to talk about it.

And having the younger generations being able to not speak for them but allow them to speak through us, it just like solidifies that they were here.

And it also just empowered the arts 'cause it just gives more respect for poetry.

Our final recitation is from Saabria Prater.

Nothing to Do by James Ephraim McGirt.

The fields are white, the laborers are few yet say the idol.

There's nothing to do.

Jails are crowded.

And Sunday school's 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?

We are now ready to present our third and second place finalists.

And of course our 2025 state champion.

The 2025 Mississippi Poetry Out loud.

Third place finalist is Sophie Mattingly, the 2025 Mississippi Poetry Out loud, second place finalist and recipient of a $100 award and a $200 grant for their school library is Nita Hardin and the 2025 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud state champion and a recipient of a $200 award and an all expense paid trip for two to Washington DC and a $500 grant for their school library is Saabria Prater.

Uh, I'm like really happy 'cause like this has been four years in the making.

'cause my freshman year, like I didn't actually know what I was getting into.

I finally got it together and now I'm a state champion.

Congratulations to our state champion and our finalist and all of our participants in the 2025 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud recitation contest.

Y'all did a wonderful job.

And thank you to our mc Steven Randall.

And thanks to our special musical guest, fifth Child, a huge thank you to everyone who contributed to the success of Poetry Out Loud, the teachers, students, coaches, parents, clinicians, volunteers, and judges, and to the schools and organizations partnered with the Mississippi Arts Commission to bring the magic of poetry to the students of our state, including the Yoka Petha Arts Council in Oxford, the Margaret Walker Alexander National Research 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 2026 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud contest visit arts.ms.gov/ PL registration is open to schools and community organizations working with students in grades nine through 12.

This concludes the 2025 Mississippi Poetry Out Loud Recitation Contest.

I look forward to seeing everyone here again next year.