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Raeanna Tremethick and Emma Carmona have moved on to the Poetry Out Loud virtual state competition.
The contest showcases the talents of high school performance poets across the nation. The students present poems from established poets.
Tremethick won first place. One of her performances included “A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky” by Lewis Carroll.
Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.
Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
She also presented a poem by Margarita Engle.
Carmona came in second place. She performed “England in 1819” by Percy Bysshe Shelley and “Time does not bring relief; you all have lied” by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Christopher D. Sims.
Credit Connie Kuntz
Sims is from the West Side of Rockford and first shared his poetic gifts onstage at Haskell Elementary School thanks to Dorothy Paige-Turner.
Rooted in Black joy and celebration, his poems wind through the landscapes of this country s past and present. He hopes they will inform, engage and entertain. Sims, who originally wrote rap and hip-hop lyrics, said his poetry has a bebop cadence. His poem Thinking About King: A Thesis-Poem On Leadership reflects on the years since Martin Luther King Jr. s passing.
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