image from the Kentucky Arts Council website
Accents readers might be interested in “Where I’m From”: A Poetry of Place, which is an annual celebration of Kentucky poetry originating from George Ella Lyon’s poem of the same name.
One of the goals of this celebration is to collect a “Where I’m From” poem from all 120 counties in Kentucky. For more information and rules, please click here. For a list of your county’s representative, click here.
The deadline to submit a poem is December 1st, 2016.
Lori meadows, Executive Director for the Kentucky Arts Council gave the opening remarks for Kentucky Writers’ Day on April 25th, 2016.
Below are videos of the other readers, three of which are poets published by Accents and all of which are Poet Laureates of Kentucky.
Naomi Cliett of Elizabethtown High School is the Kentucky finalist for Poetry Out Loud. The event was held February 23rd, 2016, at the Grand Theatre in Frankfort, Kentucky. Click here for coverage of the finals from The Lane Report.
Below are the semi-finalists for the event. Continue reading
Jordan Smith of Harlan, Kentucky recently won first place on the ninth season of The Voice, an American singing competition reality TV program. The above video is from the 2012 State finals in Frankfort, Kentucky where Smith is representing Harlan County High School. The winner of the that year’s competition was Curtlyn Kramer of Gatton Academy.
Smith read the following poems during his performance:
Poetry Out Loud is a national competition that teaches high school children about poetry by having them memorize and recite poems in front of an audience. Classrooms select students to compete in school-wide competitions. The winners of the school competitions go to the state competition, and those winners go to the national competition in Washington, DC. It is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.
The Kentucky Arts Council is a state agency that creates “opportunities to foster environments to find value in the arts, participate in the arts and benefit from the arts through programs, grants and services.” (source)
As of December 2015, Jordan Smith is the highest-selling The Voice artist, whose covers of “Great is Thy Faithfulness” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” both reached the iTunes No. 1 spot, beating out “Hello” by Adele.