Teacher Orientation and Important Dates

Teacher Orientations 
The dates for this year's Teacher Orientations have been set! The first orientation will be held November 16th at the New Hampshire Institute of Art (NHIA) in the French Building. The second orientation will be Tuesday, November 17th at the Pease Public Library in Plymouth and will be in the Community Room. Both orientations will run from approximately 4-6PM.

Please click here to sign up for one session.

Attendance is strongly encouraged for all schools - new and experienced - as this is key checkpoint to ensuring a successful year of POL! We will have Teachers Guides there for you to pick up as well as helpful resources and light refreshments.

Other Important Program Dates: 2015-2016
These have been added to the right-hand sidebar on this blog and are also listed below.

• Nov. 16th - NHIA Teacher Orientation 
• Nov. 17th - Plymouth Teacher Orientation
• Jan. 9th - Student Poetry Clinic (snow date, Jan. 10th)
• Feb. - Judge Training (dates TBD)
• Feb. 19th - Deadline for holding school competition
• Feb, 29th - NHIA Semi-Final
• Mar. 3rd - Jean's Playhouse Semi-Final
• Mar. 7th - SNHU Semi-Final
• Mar. 9th - New England College Semi-Final 
• Mar. 21st - State Finals at the State House *not confirmed

New Details on NHIA Scholarship Offers

The New Hampshire Institute of Art (NHIA) is offering two very generous scholarships to New Hampshire Poetry Out Loud students and teachers. School or group contest champions and alternates who choose to enroll at NHIA will be awarded a $10,000, four-year, renewable scholarship! And teachers - lest you be overlooked! - you are now eligible for a $5,000 renewable scholarship should you enroll in any one of NHIA's low-res MFA programs. We are very grateful to have such a strong partnership with NHIA and hope many of you and your students are able to take advantage of these offers.

You can find full details on the NHIA website or in the letter below.

If you have any questions please contact Caitlin Delaney at nhpol.coordinator@gmail.com or Nick Cheney at nicholascheney@nhia.org.

The Semi-Final Dates and Venues are Set!

The dates, snow dates, and venues for New Hampshire's four, regional, semi-finals have been finalized! We are grateful to all of our host sites for having us back this year.

1. February 29, 2016, New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester (snow date, March 1, 2016)
2. March 3, 2016, Jean's Playhouse in Lincoln (snow date, March 4, 2016)
3. March 7, 2016, Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester (snow date, March 8, 2016)
4. March 9, 2016, New England College in Henniker (snow date, March 10, 2016)

In the coming weeks, we will assign each school or group to a semi-final. In making these assignments out goal is to minimize you and your student's travel time to the competition while also ensuring we have balanced and even-sized groups at each event. If you have a strong preference for one venue or date please let Caitlin know ASAP by emailing her at nhpol.coordinator@gmail.com.

The state finals date and snow date are still being finalized but will be shared as soon as they are confirmed.

Meet two "genius" poets!

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recently announced their 2015 class of grantees. These so-called "genius grants" are unique in many ways, notably that there is no application process and the prize money ($625,000 over five years) is given with no strings attached to help support the grantee and encourage them to explore their area of interest without financial risks. This year, two poets - 72-year old Ellen Bryant Voigt of Vermont, and 36-year old Ben Lerner of New York - were selected as grantees. Voigt's recent work includes Headwaters (2013), Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976-2006, and Shadow of Heaven (2002). Lerner's work includes Mean Free Path (2010); Angle of Yaw (2006), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Mean Free Path (2010). His sonnet sequence, The Lichtenberg Figures (2004), won the Hayden Carruth Award, was chosen by Library Journal as one of the year’s 12 best poetry book. 

Students' conventional wisdom may suggest poetry is old, inaccessible, or boring but introducing them to these two "genius" poets (and their fellow class of grantees, perhaps) may just get a new conversation started!

2015 MacArthur "Genius" Award Recipients and poets Ellen Bryan Voigt and Ben Lerner