Poetry Allowed is a poetry recitation contest developed at The Archer School for Girls by a team of students and faculty who are passionate about poetry, voice, and freedom of choice.
After enthusiastically supporting Poetry Out Loud for the past five years, Archer is pausing participation for the 2025-2026 academic year. However, concerned students and faculty immediately felt the loss and recognized a need to continue a poetry performance competition. Our goal is to increase both student agency and include greater diversity in artistic representation, particularly with respect to the voices we would like to welcome and celebrate.
The result is Poetry Allowed, a competition that invites students to experience, explore, connect, and perform poetry through the act of memorization and the art of recitation.
Poems on the Poetry Allowed website are student-selected from widely recognized poetry collections:
Poetry Foundation Academy of American Poets Poetry Society of AmericaStudents are also encouraged to expand the Poetry Allowed online anthology with suggestions for additional poems. In an effort to accommodate the ever-expanding voices of American high school students, our website offers a "Suggest a poem" feature, allowing students to explore specific online poetry collections (above) in order to augment Poetry Allowed's anthology with additional poems that contribute to the overall representation of poets and participants alike.
While this program's origin story begins at The Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles, California, we invite other schools to participate as well.
Reach out to us on the Contact Us page for more information.