A select group of local high school students will congregate at the Jackson State University Student Center on Wednesday to recite poetry “out loud.”
The public is invited to enjoy the Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest for the central region of Mississippi contest at noon at the Student Center’s theater, according to Dr. Robert Luckett, director of the Margaret Walker Center for the Study of the African-American Experience.
Poetry Out Loud is a program that encourages high school students to learn about great poetry through memorization, performance and competition.
The contest will provide students the chance to be one of three finalists to advance to the state finals in March. One winner will be selected to attend the national finals in Washington, D.C., Luckett said.
Judges are: Dr. Deborah H. Barnes, associate professor and graduate faculty, JSU Department of English; Dr. Monica Flippin-Wynn, assistant professor, JSU Department of Mass Communications; and Dr. Anita DeRouen, assistant professor of English and director of Writing & Teaching at Millsaps College.
The Walker Center is partnering with the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, and the Mississippi Arts Commission to host the event.
Since 2010, Margaret Walker’s poems, For My People and Childhood, have been officially recognized in Poetry Out Loud’s anthology of poems, from which students nationwide must choose options to recite.
“It is a much deserved honor,” said Luckett. “For My People and Childhood are two of her most loved poems, and I am proud that we can introduce her works to another generation of young people.”
In 2010, the national winner of Poetry Out Loud, Amber Rose Johnson, recited For My People for her last selection, and, in 2013, Kristin Dupard advanced from the central region of Mississippi to win the national Poetry Out Loud contest.
As a professor of English at Jackson State in 1968, Margaret Walker founded the Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People. Today, named in her honor, the Margaret Walker Center is both an archive and museum dedicated to the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of African-American history and culture.