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POL Heads to Washington D.C.

Alyvia Crawley is Tennessee's 2018 Poetry Out Loud Champion
Alyvia Crawley is Tennessee’s 2018 Poetry Out Loud Champion

By Meredith Callis, Arts Education Special Projects Coordinator –

The final countdown has arrived for the Poetry Out Loud (POL) Nationals next week. We are thrilled to be joining Alyvia Crawley, a junior of Clarksville High School, as she represents Tennessee with 51 other finalists from across the U.S.

This is Alyvia’s first year competing in Poetry Out Loud. Alyvia will first compete in the semifinals, which will be held Tuesday, April 24 at Lisner Auditorium at George Washington University with hopes to go on to the finals later in the week. Alyvia will be joined by her family and the TN Arts Education staff, and English teacher Roy Buchanan who received an award to attend the Poetry Out Loud Nationals to watch Alyvia compete.

Alyvia has shown incredible talent and dedication to the competition. She has even been working with poetry coach Tracy Nichols of Austin Peay State University, who is currently helping her rehearse the selected poems. Please join us in cheering on our state champion during the semifinals on Tuesday, April 24th by watching the online stream of her performance here, on the National Endowment for the Art’s website. Alyvia will be 11th to recite during the time slot of 1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time. You may also sign up here to host a viewing party in your English class! Live captioning will be available. We wish the best of luck to Alyvia, and heartfelt congratulations to all of the competing state finalists in this year’s Poetry Out Loud competition.