Makai Copado
Students from San Marcos High School in Santa Barbara and Pioneer Valley and Righetti high schools in Santa Maria took top honors at the Santa Barbara County Education Office’s Poetry Slam competition.
The event took place via Zoom on March 31 to kick off April as National Poetry Month.
The first place winner was Makai Copado, a junior at Pioneer Valley High School, with poems titled “What We’ve Done Is What We know” and “I’ll Love You Forever.”
Madeline Miller, San Marcos High School senior, won second place with
“The One About Sea Anemones” and “Song for My Sister.”
Third place went to Steven Villanueva, Righetti High School senior, for
“Peaceful, Screaming, Golden Gleam” and “Hammer of Justice.”
The Poetry Slam competition, which combines performance, writing, competition and audience participation, is a program of the Santa Barbara County Education Office Educational Technology Services Department. This year, SBCEO tapped the team at the Get Lit-Words Ignite organization, a Los Angeles nonprofit founded in 2006 to increase literacy, empower youth and energize and heal communities through poetry and visual media.
“Spoken word poetry provides students a stage to be unapologetic truth-tellers and to use the power of language and authentic performance to transcend human struggle and create beauty. It is art for collective healing,” said Ellen Barger, assistant superintendent of SBCEO Curriculum and instruction.
The students will perform their winning poems at the Juvenile Youth Empowerment Summit hosted by SBCEO in October.
email: mmcmahon@newspress.com
FYI
For more information, contact Rachel Lawton at 805-964-4710, ext. 5222, or rlawton@sbceo.org.
