Nevada Arts Council

RENO, Nev. -  Mandy Titolo, a senior at College of Southern Nevada High School-West, earned $1,000 as the state champion of the Nevada Arts Council’s statewide Poetry Out Loud competition held Saturday, March 24 in Reno. Titolo recited “The Larger” by Joanie Mackowski, “Life in a Love,” by Robert Browning and “Ego” by Denise Duhamel.  It was the first time she entered the competition. Titolo’s school will also receive $1,000 to support literary programming.

Titolo will advance to the Poetry Out Loud National Finals in Washington D.C.  Nevada has fared well in the past, with its representative in the top 10 national finalists during the past two years. This year, more than 2,000 high-school aged students across Nevada participated in competition with nearly 360,000 engaged nationally.  Graciela Maya-Joseph, of Owyhee, took second place and Jennifer Simon, of Pahrump, was third.

At Saturday’s 2012 Nevada State Finals, an engaged audience at CommRow’s Cargo Music Hall in downtown Reno listened intently as Titolo and 12 other high-schooled aged students recited 29 classic and contemporary poems. 

Al competitors prepared three poems selected from an anthology of more than 600 classic and contemporary poems, and some students competed at three levels – school, county and statewide. At each level, judges reviewed each recitation, using 10 different criteria including accuracy, voice inflection, difficulty of selection and interpretation.

“Students, teachers, coaches and parents dedicate themselves to the program for months in advance.  In Nevada, we actually increased the award amounts to the top three finalists since we felt the students’ work was such a remarkable achievement,” said Susan Boskoff, executive director of the Nevada Arts Council.

Poetry Out Loud is a program of the Nevada Arts Council, presented in partnership with the Nevada Alliance for Arts Education, Nevada Department of Education, National Endowment for the Arts, The Poetry Foundation, and this year’s major sponsor, NV Energy. 

The Nevada Arts Council is the agency charged with ensuring that state and national funds support cultural activity and encourage participation in the arts throughout Nevada.  In addition to providing hundreds of grants to arts and community-based organizations, schools, artists and local municipalities throughout the state, the Arts Council coordinates a variety of statewide programs and activities such as the annual Poetry Out Loud recitation competition for high-school aged students, traveling exhibits, artist residencies, workshops and cultural assessments. For more information, please visit the department’s web site at www.nevadaculture.org.