Poetry In Voice / Les voix de la poésie is a recitation contest for high school and CEGEP students. With their teachers’ support, students read poems in our online anthology, find the ones they love, learn them by heart, and recite them in front of an audience.
Students choose to compete in English, in French, or bilingually. The top-scoring students advance through the levels of the contest to the annual National Finals, where they compete for $25,000 in prizes for themselves and their school libraries.
Our anthology features poems by a wide swath of canonical and contemporary poets, both from Canada and abroad.
We also offer multiple ways for students to approach a poem – through a poet’s biography or an interview; through fun, interactive content like Poem Roulette and quizzes; and through our archive of inspiring student recitation videos.
Through our teacher portal, we provide lesson plans, evaluation materials, and how-to videos that make teaching poetry exciting, not intimidating.
Everything is available for free on this website.
Founded in 2010 as a registered charity by Scott Griffin of The Griffin Poetry Prize, we have grown from a pilot project of 12 schools in Ontario to 700 schools from across the country with over 50,000 students participating this year.
Poetry and recitation are resonating with Canadian youth – students have read our poems over 4 million times.
Next year, our program will expand to include content for students in kindergarten through grade 8 and content that encourages students to write poetry.
For more information, please contact our Director, David Smith: david@poetryinvoice.ca