Meet the 2024 Poetry Out Loud State Finalists

Eliana is a senior at Jasper High School and this is her second year doing poetry out loud. She likes nature, her cats, and video games. Eliana believes that poetry can open the world to unique perspectives.

Aalihya is a senior at Pike High School. This is her third and final year in Poetry Out Loud. She LOVES Theatre, visual arts, and making people smile! For the past 2 years, she’s placed 3rd in the competition, so this year she plans to get that #1 spot!

Kylah Hockemeyer is currently a freshman at Eagle Tech Academy, and this is her first year being involved in Poetry Out Loud. She is heavily involved in theater and art. Kylah also strongly believes in equality for everyone and hopes to one day change the status quo.

Winnie is a 9th grader from Bloomington High School South. She is a sensitive dreamer who is obsessed with photography and c-dramas. She hopes to spark change with her poetry and create a safe space for creativity and compassion.

Eve-Marie is a freshman at St. Thomas More Academy in South Bend. Her great passion is dance, especially ballet and ballroom. When not in the dance studio, Eve-Marie can be found drawing, crafting, or listening to audio books. She is an avid traveler and student of foreign languages, who delights in exploring other cultures. Although this is her first year competing in Poetry Out Loud, Eve-Marie has been performing poetry recitations since she was four years old and has dreamed of this moment for years.

Allison is a junior at North Decatur Jr./Sr. High School. Her favorite subject in school is AP English Literature and Composition and hopes to do well in the competition today.

Jehanna Fisher is a returning 16yr old HS Junior contestant from the Early College program in Evansville IN, working toward a degree in Cloud Computing. She enjoys poetry, public speaking, and programming for fun. Her software game has been featured on Scratch. She is especially excited about the poems she’s selected this year and hopes you enjoy them as much as she does.

Ava Madrazo is.a freshman at Herron High School, and this is her first year participating in Poetry Out Loud. When she’s not reciting her favorite lines, Ava loves to sing, compete in Quiz Bowl, and play basketball. She believes voices are powerful in poetry and in the world.

Dalanie is a Junior in high school at Indiana Digital Gateway Academy. She loves reading poetry when she can and hopes to try her best for the competition, as long as she has fun in the end.

Bobbie “River” Graves is a Junior at Switzerland County High School. In her past years attending the school, she has been known to be an active member in multiple academic teams, the band, color guard, and drama club. Outside of school, she likes to spend her time caring for and tending to flowers and playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Christian Rhodes is a 9th grade cellist in Fort Wayne’s Youth Symphony Orchestra. She participates in her school’s Key Club, Interact Club, Quiz Bowl, and in the English division of academic Super Bowl. In her free time she enjoys crocheting, drawing, reading, writing, and biking. Poetry is a great passion of hers, and she’s excited to share it with you here.

Kaden Sullivan is a 9th grade beginning his first year of poetry out loud. He competes in many sports such as Football, Wresling, and Track.

Ishita is a junior at Columbus North High School this year. She is a varsity alternate on her school’s tennis team, and contributes to a number of her school clubs including President of her Girls Who Codes Club and Vice President of Environmental Club. As someone with history as a classical dancer, expressions are her favorite way to communicate the dance with the viewer and enhance the experience, which she finds is her favorite component to implement in her own recital of poetry, to speak to her audience in that same way.

Elle Strother is a Junior at West Washington High School. She is the president of the student council, a member of the Thespian Club, BPA and FFA. Elle also placed in the girl’s regional wrestling competition. During her free time, she volunteers at Crossroad Ranch as a camp counselor and enjoys performing on stage at the Washington County Theater. This is her first time competing in Poetry Out Loud.

Curtis L. Crisler was born and raised in Gary, Indiana. Crisler, an award-winning poet/author, has a new book called Doing Drive-bys on How to Love in the Midwest. He has six poetry books, two YA books, and five poetry chapbooks. He’s been published in a variety of magazines, journals, and anthologies. He’s co-editor of poetry. He created the Indiana Chitlin Circuit and the poetry form called the sonastic. He’s the Indiana Poet Laureate and Professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne (PFW). He can be contacted at www.poetcrisler.com.

Author of one full-length poetry collection and four poetry chapbooks, Hiromi Yoshida is a finalist for the New Women’s Voices Poetry Prize, and a semifinalist for the Gerald Cable Book Award. While serving as a poetry reader for Flying Island Journal, and as secretary of the Writers Guild at Bloomington, she coordinates the Guild’s Last Sunday Poetry reading series.

Siren Hand is an Indianapolis-based, disabled Army veteran writer of creative nonfiction and poetry who reflects on aspects of community, mental health & military in conflict.  Their writing has been published in Proud to be: Writing from American warriors (Southeast Missouri State University Press); Things We Carry Still: Poems & Micro-Stories About Military Gear (Middle West Press); and their latest chapbook, FLOW COSMIC STRING (Marian University).  March 2024 they welcome publication as closing poet to Seeds of a New Way: Nurturing Authentic and Diverse Religious Leadership from Skinner House Books.  Siren comes from the mangrove roots of the Tampa Bay spoken word/slam scene of the early 2000s, and is amazed to see how our speakers embody their selected works today.

Mitchell L. H. Douglas is the author of dying in the scarecrow’s arms, \blak\ \al-fə bet\, winner of the Persea Books Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor’s Choice Award, and Cooling Board: A Long-Playing Poem, an NAACP Image Award and Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominee. His “Poem that Begins w/a Tweet About Gwendolyn Brooks” was recently featured in This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets edited by poet and children’s author Kwame Alexander. A 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, he is Associate Professor of English at Indiana University Indianapolis, a Cave Canem alum, and cofounder of the Affrilachian Poets.

Tony Brewer is a poet and audio artist from Bloomington, Indiana. He is executive director of the Spoken Word Stage at the 4th Street Festival and co-producer of the Writers Guild Spoken Word Series and the Urban Deer experimental music series. He has published 12 books and chapbooks, including Fragile Batteries (The Grind Stone, 2023) and Pity for Sale (Gasconade Press, 2022). Tony has been offering Poetry On Demand at coffeehouses, museums, cemeteries, churches, bars, and art and music festivals for fifteen years, and he is a frequent collaborator with experimental music & field recording ensemble ORTET. More at https://linktr.ee/TonyBrewer

Nichelle M. Hayes MPA, MLS is the President of the Black Caucus American Library Association BCALA (2022-2024) and CEO of Hayes Consulting. Working as an Information Professional with a focus on the African Diaspora, Community Engagement and Inclusion.

An active member of ALA she has served/serving on the “2023 ALA Nominating Committee” & “Working Group to Condemn White Supremacy and Fascism as Antithetical to Library Work” 2022 – 2023.

Hayes recently was honored as a 2023 Culture Carrier Award Honoree and 2022 National Coalition of 100 Black Women – Breakthrough Women Award. In 2021 by Library Journal Movers & Shakers – Advocates.

A keynote speaker, she welcomes contacts via LinkedIN.

A lover of poetry, two of her favorite poets are Mari Evans and Ethridge Knight.

A Genealogist with a focus on African Ancestry and keeping families connected. Visit her blog at https://thetiesthatbind.blog. A graduate of Indiana University – with a Masters in Library Science.

Chantel Massey is a storyteller, poet, author, teaching artist, editor, organizer, educator, practicing Afrofuturist, and MFA candidate at Randolph College. Massey is a fellow of The Watering Hole, VONA poetry  resident, and has received support from Brooklyn Poets, Hurston/Wright Foundation, and Tin House. She is a 2023 Best of Net Award winner and 2020 Indiana Eugene and Marilyn Glick Author Awards Emerging Author finalist for her first collection of poetry, Bursting At The Seams  (VK Press, 2018), a Midwest Black girl coming of age story.  Massey founded the literary arts organization, UnLearn Arts, radically dedicated to amplifying and cultivating the craft and wellness of BIPOC writers in the Midwest and elsewhere.