The Vermont Poetry Out Loud Awards for Original Poetry
The 2020 Original Poetry Award Winners (left to right): Samantha Aikman, Sophie Leggett, and Aaron Brown.
Poetry Out Loud is a national poetry recitation competition, administered in Vermont by the Vermont Arts Council. In 2020, the Council added an original poetry writing component to our annual Poetry Out Loud activities. In partnership with the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center’s Scholastic Writing Awards, we launched the first annual Vermont Poetry Out Loud Awards for Original Poetry.
We received poems from twelve schools participating in Poetry Out Loud, and nearly twenty students submitted poems. Submitting original poetry can be very personal, and we appreciate the courage and initiative that these students showed in submitting their work. This year we selected three poems and student poets to recognize.
2020 Winners
- Samantha Aikman from Mt Mansfield Union High School for her poem, "The Way the Flood Rises"
- Aaron Brown from Vermont Academy for his poem, "Freckles"
- Sophie Leggett from Woodstock Union High School for her poem, "Heartstrings (In Short)"