Augusta – Charlotte Feinberg of Gorham High School won the 2014 Poetry Out Loud state competition on February 26 at the Waterville Opera House. Thalia Muyderman from Waynflete School in Portland was the runner-up. Both students will receive cash awards and their schools will receive prize money to purchase poetry books for their libraries.

Poetry Out Loud is sponsored annually at the state level by the Maine Arts Commission. This year’s competition included over 8,000 students in 46 public and private Maine high schools. After participating in classroom, school-wide and regional level competitions, nineteen state finalists gathered at the Waterville Opera House to recite three rounds of poetry from memory in the Maine State Finals. Feinberg recited three poems: “The Pomegranate and the Big Crowd” by Alberto Ríos, “Monet Refuses the Operation” by Lisel Mueller and “When You Are Old” by William Butler Yeats.

As the Maine State Champion, Feinberg will represent Maine at the National Poetry Out Loud Finals on April 28-30 in Washington, D.C. where students from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico will compete for the national title and a total of $50,000 in awards, including a grand prize of $20,000, and school stipends for the purchase of poetry. All prizes, as well as all materials for running this popular program in high schools across the nation, come from the National Endowment for the Arts and their partner in Poetry Out Loud, the Poetry Foundation.

In addition to Feinberg and Muyderman, other state finalists were: Caleigh Grogan, Bangor High School; Kobe Cancel, Carrabec High School; Julia Cornell, Catherine McAuley High School; Joel Kahn, Deering High School; Emma Beyor, Erskine Academy; Josef Biberstein, Freeport High School; Matthew Clark, Gardiner Area High School; Noah Gardner, Hampden Academy; Zanna Spinney, Kennebunk High School; Emma Johnson Curnin, Kents Hill School; Abigail Bergdoll, Maine Central Institute; Emily Lagace, Messalonskee High School; Rebecca Dow, Mt. Abram Regional High School; Isabelle Fall, Mt. Ararat High School; Charlotte Eisenberg, North Yarmouth Academy; Ari Jihan, Searsport District High School; Jacob Sperber, Yarmouth High School.

For more information about Poetry Out Loud, visit http://mainearts.maine.gov/Pages/Education/POL-Home or contact Argy Nestor, Director of Arts Education, Maine Arts Commission at argy.nestor@maine.gov.