OC RYSE

Saturday, April 13, and Sunday, April 14, 2019

5 p.m.

Orange County School of the Arts
Center for the Arts | Margaret A. Webb Theatre
801 N. Main Street
Santa Ana, CA  92701

General Information

OC RYSE is the only performance poetry competition featuring teams of students from high schools across Orange County. The goal of OC RYSE is to increase the exposure of poetry to a general public audience by featuring the engaging, dynamic performances of talented local young poets.

In the competition, student performers first choose a classic poem to dramatically recite. Second, students craft and perform an original response poem that echoes elements of the classic choice. This synthesis of academics and artistry promises audiences a stimulating exploration of poetry’s broad power.

Two teams of up to 7 members per school may register for OC RYSE. Home school teams, after school clubs, & similar organizations can compete as long as they adhere to all the rules for traditional schools. For a 3-minute video overview with excerpts of performances, click here or the link below. 

Special Guest Host & Performance by Phil Kaye

Special Guest Host & Performance by Phil Kaye

Phil Kaye of the international performance poetry organization Project VOICE will guest host, with a special performance following the finals. As a special bonus to teams, Phil will also conduct workshops for those teams that advance to the finals!

Raundi Moore-Kondo

Raundi Moore-Kondo

Performance Poet

Raundi Moore-Kondo is convinced that the zombie apocalypse is just another metaphor for poetry, which explains her strange compulsion to infect everyone with it. To that end she founded For The Love of Words Creative Writing Workshops & Small Press (www.theloveofwords.com). She has been the featured poet on KPFK’s Poet’s Café, Spoken Word/Spoke Song, and just about everywhere in Southern California.

Raundi is the editor and publisher of two all-ages anthologies: A Poet is a Poet No Matter How Tall and Episode II:ATTACK OF THE POEMS. She has a full-length collection Let the Ends Spill over your Lips and a chapbook, The Mammary Chronicles: The Hills Are Alive, dedicated to raising awareness and funds for breast cancer charities.

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Guest Judges

Dorothy Barresi

Dorothy Barresi

Guest Judge

Dorothy Barresi is the author of four books of poetry: American Fanatics Rouge Pulp; The Post-Rapture Diner, winner of an American Book Award; and All of the Above, winner of the Barnard College Women Poets Prize. She has frequently served as a judge for the Los Angeles Times Book Award in Poetry and is Professor of English and Creative Writing at California State University, Northridge.

She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, the Emily Clark Balch Prize from Virginia Quarterly Review, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, Volt, Pool, and Ploughshares.

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Eric Morago

Eric Morago

Guest Judge

Eric Morago is the current publisher of Moontide Press. A Pushcart Prize nominated poet, he believes performance carries as much importance on the page, as it does off. His poetry collections include the book What We Ache For and album “I Don’t Like Straws.” He is a poet-in-residence with California Workforce Association and teaches workshops for Red Hen Press’ Writing in School’s program.

Myrenna Ogbu

Myrenna Ogbu

Guest Judge

Myrenna Ogbu is a host of Poet’s Café on KPFK. Originally from Nigeria, she has a long history of hybrid poetry projects stretching across multiple countries. Her CD, Warm Sunday, mixes poetry and jazz.  She is presently at work on a similar music-poetry fusion project. 

Patty Seyburn

Patty Seyburn

Guest Judge

A professor at CSULB, Patty Seyburn’s fourth collection of poems, Perfecta, was published 2014. Her third book, Hilarity, won the Green Rose Prize. Her two previous books of poems are Mechanical Cluster and Diasporadic, which won the 1997 Marianne Moore Poetry Prize and the American Library Association’s Notable Book Award for 2000.

Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, most recently The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, Poetry in Michigan/Michigan in Poetry, and Irresistible Sonnets. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including The Paris Review, Poetry, New England Review, Field, Slate, Crazyhorse, Cutbank, Quarterly West, and Boston Review. She won a 2011 Pushcart Prize for her poem, “The Case for Free Will,” published in Arroyo Literary Review. Seyburn grew up in Detroit. She earned a BS and an MS in Journalism from Northwestern University, an MFA in Poetry from University of California, Irvine, and a Ph.D. in Poetry and Literature from the University of Houston. She is a Professor at California State University, Long Beach.

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Questions?

Contact Josh Wood at josh.wood@ocsarts.net or 714.560.0900 ext. 6985.