English Teacher Beth Curran announced the winner of this year’s Bolles Poetry Out Loud Competition, an outreach of the National Endowment for the Arts and Poetry Foundation. A panel of Bolles English faculty judges yielded a first place winner of the mid-February competition – ­­­­Emma McAdoo ’22, who will represent Bolles at the state Poetry Out Loud contest in St. Petersburg March 2. Approximately 35 schools will participate, Curran said.

In addition to McAdoo,  participating students in this year’s Bolles Poetry Out Loud event included:

Christina Deeb ’21  (3^rd place)

Caden Flowers ’20 

Jeremiah Johnson ’20 

Sarah Scherkenbach ’22 (2^nd place)

Sophie Shwartzman ’22 

Clariss Valdivia ’21 

“All contestants did an amazing job and were well prepared for this event,” Curran said. “We wish Emma all the best in the state competition.”

Bolles has participated in this program for eight years. Since the national Poetry Out Loud program's beginning in 2005, 2.5 million students from more than 7,300 schools nationwide have participated in the program. Students choose poems from the POL website and recite them at the classroom, school, and state level before competing at the national level. Poem recitations are judged on physical presence, voice and articulation, dramatic appropriateness, level of complexity, evidence of understanding and overall performance. Each school that participates sends one student to the state competition.