Claude Mumbere Takes Silver at Nationals

Congratulations to Claude Mumbere for earning second place at the National Poetry Out Loud Competition in Washington D.C. on Tuesday evening. Over 365,000 students across the country and the U.S. territories participated in this program. It was quite an honor for Claude to earn second place. We want to thank the National Endowment for the Arts, The Poetry Foundation and The Vermont Arts Council. This program would not have been possible without them.

We also want to thank Stacy Raphael of the Vermont Arts Council for her support of Claude during the competition. Thank you to Scott Stone, Morgan Irons and Baron Wormser for their coaching advice. Thank you to Michael Starobin, director of the NASA film LOOP that Claude narrated last year for his social media and audience support. Thank you to all of the media, such as WCAX Rachel Feldman and Kristin Carlson and supporters across the country who rooted for Claude and provided social media support during the seminfinals and finals. 

We are excited to continue to expand the Poetry Out Loud program next year at Burlington High School. Start picking your poems now, seahorses!

Your Poetry Out Loud Advisors,

Ms. Lowe and Mr. Roesch

Below you can find some links to recent news coverage. 

WCAX Coverage 

WPTZ Coverage

Burlington Free Press Article

Claude Mumbere Makes it to the Finals!

We've been in Washington D.C. since Sunday morning and had quite a busy schedule. Claude performed all three of his poems during the semifinal round yesterday morning and made it to the National Poetry Out Loud Finals! He earned $1000 last night for himself and $500 of poetry books for BHS. We are so proud of Claude!

Claude will compete alongside eight other state champions in the finals tonight from 7-9:15pm. You can watch live here:

http://www.nea.gov/national/poetry/2012-webcast.html

You can also follow on Twitter. Use hashtag #POLnews. Thank you for all of the Twitter shout outs and support from the Vermont community!

We're Off to Washington D.C.!

Senior Claude Mumbere will represent Burlington High School and the state of Vermont at the Poetry Out Loud National Competition on Monday, May 14 and Tuesday, May 15. The competition will be streamed live, and there are several ways to follow the competition. Semifinals (all 53 competitors) will air from 9am-8pm on Monday, May 14. Finals (top 9) will air Tuesday, May 15 from 7-9pm. This is a one-time webcast and will not be available for viewing after event. The link is: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/poetry-out-loud-finals .

Interact with the Poetry Out Loud community by joining the Poetry Out Loud Twitter feed. To get started, set up a profile on Twitter (it's free at www.twitter.com). Then, follow Twitter news at @PoetryOutLoud (www.poetryfoundation.org) or @NEAarts (www.arts.gov). Use the hashtag #POLnews to follow the conversation on Poetry Out Loud in the Twittersphere. Poetry fans should appreciate the brevity of Twitter, all updates/tweets are 140 character or less!

In addition, you can follow Poetry Out Loud news on facebook at either http://www.facebook.com/NationalEndowmentfortheArts or automatically go to the facebook page as well.

We will try to post updates on this blog while we're there as well.