Registration for the 2014-15 New Hampshire Poetry Out Loud competition is now open.

Interested high school students and home-school students affiliated with local high school groups should register by Saturday, Nov. 1.

To help mark Poetry Out Loud’s 10th anniversary, New Hampshire will incorporate the theme “Celebrate the Voices of Our High School Students” into the program. Each year, about 10,000 Granite State students participate.

Poetry Out Loud, a nationwide program of the National Endowment of the Arts in partnership with the Poetry Foundation, encourages youths to learn about the beauty and power of language through memorization and performance of poems. The program helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence and learn about their literary heritage.

Poetry Out Loud competitors memorize and recite poems from hundreds identified by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation that represent the breadth of great poetry. Participants are judged on the quality of their presentation, accuracy in reciting the poem and its difficulty. The program supports the Common Core language arts and curriculum frameworks.

In New Hampshire, classroom champions compete to represent their high school at regional competitions; those winners participate in the state championship, which is scheduled to take place in March.

New Hampshire’s champion will join other state champions at the national finals Washington, D.C., where more than $50,000 in college scholarships and prizes are awarded to the top finishers.

New Hampshire’s Poetry Out Loud program is managed by the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Hampshire Writers Project. Other partners include the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, the Arts Alliance of Northern New Hampshire, the Granite State Ambassadors and the Frost Place.

To register or for more information, visit www.nh.gov/nharts and click on the “Poetry Out Loud” button on the right.

New Hampshire educators interested in having their school participate should contact Catherine O’Brian at 271-0795 or Catherine.R.OBrian@dcr.nh.gov.