2025 Poetry Out Loud Hawai’i Final to Take Place This Month

Honolulu Theatre for Youth and the Hawai’i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts will present the 2025 Poetry Out Loud Hawai’i State Final which will be held on Sunday, February 23, 2025. Twelve high school students from twelve schools representing four islands will participate in the Poetry Out Loud Hawai’i Final at Tenney Theatre at the Cathedral of St. Andrew in downtown Honolulu.

The event will be held in-person, emceed by Ben Gutierrez, and is a free event open to the public. No tickets are necessary. Audience seating will open at 12:45 PM and the competition will begin at 1:00 PM.  

Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, Poetry Out Loud® is a partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Poetry Foundation, Hawai’i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, and Honolulu Theatre for Youth. Since 2005, the national program has served more than 4.4 million students and 81,000 teachers from 20,000 schools across the country, creating community and connection through poetry. Hawai’i began participating in 2006 and over the years, more than fifty different public, charter, private schools and homeschool networks have participated representing Kauai, Oahu, Maui, Lanai, Molokai, and Hawaii Island.

Poetry Out Loud is designed to improve public speaking skills, build confidence, and teach about literary history and contemporary life. Student competitors recite works they memorized from an anthology of more than 1,200 classic and contemporary poems; the NEA and the Poetry Foundation provide free, standards-based curriculum materials—all available online—which teachers may choose to use in their classrooms.

The winner of the Poetry Out Loud Hawai’i Final will receive $200, and the winner’s representing school will receive a $500 stipend for the purchase of poetry materials. The first runner-up will receive $100, with $200 for their representing school to purchase poetry materials. The winner will also advance to the Poetry Out Loud National Finals in Washington, DC, this May to compete for the National Champion title and $20,000 grand prize.