Students compete as part of national arts education event at Farish Theater in Fayette County
FRANKFORT, Ky. (Feb. 3, 2026) – The Kentucky Arts Council will host the 2026 Kentucky Poetry Out Loud State Championship on Feb. 12, 2026. This year’s event will begin at 10:30 a.m. EST at the Farish Theater at the Lexington Public Library.
Poetry Out Loud is a national arts education program that encourages the study of poetry by offering free educational materials and a dynamic recitation competition for high school students across the country. Participating students must be in grades 9 through 12, and any representative of a Kentucky public or private high school may participate. Each school receives an artist residency, hosts their own school championship and has the opportunity for the school champion to attend the state competition.
Students from George Rogers Clark High School, Walden School, Beechwood High School, Pendleton County High School, Elizabethtown High School, Kentucky Country Day School and Williamstown High School are expected to participate.
“Poetry Out Loud showed me that we all have magic,” said 2025 State Champion Javontae Cranmo. “We all have the ability to teleport – to take ourselves out of our own mind and slip into the mind of our poets. Poetry is my Mona Lisa. It makes me curious. And that curiosity, that ability to teleport, is my magic. And poetry is magic.”
The event is a three-round poetry recitation competition sponsored by the Kentucky Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In the first and second rounds, each student is judged on the recitation of two poems. Five finalists are then judged on the recitation of a third poem. The students and their teachers select all poems from an anthology of classic and contemporary works.
The event is open to the public, but space is limited. For more information about the Poetry Out Loud program in Kentucky, contact Cynthia Warner, Kentucky Arts Council arts education director, at 502-782-4982 or [email protected].