January 26, 2026 – The Springfield Area Arts Council will host the Poetry Out Loud Central Illinois Regional Contest on Thursday, February 12, at 4 p.m. in the Club Room at the Hoogland Center for the Arts. Eisenhower High School is one of six schools competing.
The event is free and open to the public.
Poetry Out Loud is a national arts education program that encourages high school students to study and perform classic and contemporary poetry through a structured recitation competition. The program is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and state and jurisdictional arts agencies, and provides free educational materials for participating schools.
Since its launch in 2005, Poetry Out Loud has reached more than 4.5 million students and 80,000 teachers from over 20,000 schools and organizations nationwide, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. The Springfield Area Arts Council has produced both the regional and state contests for the past 20 years.
Students begin the competition at the classroom level, advancing to school-wide, regional, and state contests. Winners from the state tournament, scheduled for March 2 at 10 a.m. in Springfield, move on to the national finals in Washington, D.C., in late April.
This year, 155 students and 21 teachers from six central Illinois high schools are participating. Schools represented include Eisenhower High School in Decatur, Pawnee High School, Routt Catholic High School in Jacksonville, Sacred Heart-Griffin High School, Southeast High School, and Springfield High School.
