SIERRA CITY — It is time once again for the Sierra County Finals of Poetry Out Loud. The event will take place at the White House (312 Main Street) in Sierra City on Wednesday, February 7, beginning at 6:00 p.m. Poetry Out Loud is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, administered in California by the California Arts Council and in Sierra County by the Sierra County Arts Council. While the initiative has been in operation since 2005, both nationally and statewide, this is the sixth year that Sierra County has been involved. The competition is one of memorization and recitation and is open solely to high school students. Poems must be chosen from the national Poetry Out Loud website, where an anthology of more than 1,200 poems is available. Recitation is judged on criteria of physical presence, voice and articulation, interpretation, evidence of understanding, overall performance, and accuracy. In Sierra County, the county champion receives $250, plus an all-expense-paid trip with a chaperone to the State Finals in Sacramento on March 16-17. The county second-place finisher receives $150, and the third-place finisher $100. All three students will have their names added to the Poetry Out Loud plaque, which hangs in the lobby of the Yuba Theatre in Downieville. Paul Guffin, Sierra County Poetry Out Loud Coordinator, invites the public to come and support these students in this endeavor. He emphasizes, however, that no recording or photography is permitted during the competition so that the students may perform their recitations without distraction.