Poetry Out Loud

Visiting Artist Roster

Introduction
The Colorado Poetry Out Loud roster of visiting artists is a statewide resource that identifies and promotes high quality poets and performance artists available to share their expertise in service of Colorado high schools registered for and implementing the Poetry Out Loud program (POL). Visiting artists are available to work with teachers and their students in the classroom to deepen the understanding of and appreciation for the poet's work and/or the poems in the POL Anthology. The visiting artists are also available to serve as recitation and performance coaches for students preparing for POL competitions. While any school may use the roster to identify guest artists, Colorado Creative Industries will underwrite the expenses of visiting artists (up to $200.00) for schools registered in the Poetry Out Loud program who send a student to the state finals.

The Poetry Out Loud Program
Presented by Colorado Creative Industries and sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation, Poetry Out Loud is a program that encourages high school students to learn about great poetry through memorization, performance, and competition. Schools are invited to participate in classroom and school-wide contests, advancing to a state competition on March 20, 2012. The state champion will advance to the National Finals on May 13-15, 2012 in Washington, DC.

The program offers free, standards-based curriculum materials including print and online poetry anthologies, a teacher‘s guide with sample lesson plans to help instructors teach recitation and performance, a best performances DVD, and an audio CD featuring well-known actors such as James Earl Jones. A new Learning Recitation DVD is part of the curriculum materials this year.

Who is Eligible to Join the POL Visiting Artist Roster?
Ideal participants are Colorado professional artists who are also interested in arts education as an integral part of their professional practice. The main eligibility criteria for poets and performance artists to join the roster is artistic excellence and experience, including:

evidence of a body of work of publication and/or public performance
artistic or performance training
experience working with high-school students
ability to communicate effectively with both teachers and students
familiarity with the Poetry Out Loud program, goals, and eligible poems
willingness to abide by the roster guidelines, including the fee for service structure.

Roster applicants must be Colorado residents who are at least 18 years old. Colorado Creative Industries can remove a visiting artist from the roster at any time for actions or behavior that could be detrimental to students, teachers, the community, and/or the CCI. This includes inappropriate behavior or language in school settings, behavior that violates school rules, lack of responsible follow-through on terms of presentation agreements, unlawful activities, or other unprofessional conduct. There is no guarantee of work associated with this resource listing.

What kind of work will Visiting Artists do?
Colorado Creative Industries expects a teacher and or an administrator from a registered POL school to select an artist on the roster and to contact that person to discuss the needs of their student population and their POL-related classroom goals. They should work together to develop an appropriate approach. While there is no set visiting artist format, there are general principles and goals that apply to the work expected from schools and teaching artists. These include:

The classroom activity must support POL-related goals
If a poetry reading or performance is requested, connections between the professional work (poetry or performance) and POL program should be articulated
Artists should collaborate with classroom teachers in lesson development and delivery, and a teacher must remain in the classroom with the artist at all times
Work with both teachers (professional development) and students (hands-on, participatory lessons)
Recitation and performance coaching must benefit multiple students (one-on-one coaching can be accessed for the state champion in preparation for the national competition.)
Unless performing for multiple classrooms or a whole school audience, visiting artists should have no more than 35 students in a given class period.
Visiting artists will be compensated at a rate of $100.00 per class session, and some outside planning or preparation time is assumed within this rate.
Mileage at the state rate of .50/mile is available to visiting artists travelling over 35 miles round-trip. Any overnight accommodations must be provided by the school.
Schools planning on utilizing visiting artists contact POL Coordinator Kelleen Zubick, kelleen@zubick.us, for pre-approval. Schools who fail to do this incur an obligation to pay the artist directly.
Any school utilizing CCI-sponsored visiting artists is expected to have a student participate in the POL State Finals. Schools unable to comply with this guideline will be invoiced for costs incurred for the visiting artist.

To view the current Poetry Out Loud Visiting Artist Roster, click here

To register to be included in the Poetry Out Loud Visiting Artist Roster, click here

For Payment Forms for Poetry Out Loud Artist Visits, click here

For Evaluation Forms for Poetry Out Loud Teachers, click here

For questions regarding the POL Visiting Artist Roster,
Contact Kelleen Zubick at (720) 253-3337 or kelleen@zubick.us