Keira Alkema

West Anchorage High School senior Shannon Croft takes a deep breath, then begins reciting John Keats’ “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be.”

Her recitation of John Keats’ poem on Tuesday won her the state championship of Poetry Out Loud. It’s a classroom-based poetry program and this year, more than 3,600 students from 29 schools across Alaska participated.

As state champion, Croft received a $200 cash prize, a $500 stipend to buy poetry books for her school, and an all-expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C., for the national competition in May. Last year, West Anchorage High School student Maeva Ordaz, now a freshman at Columbia University, won the national competition.

Thunder Mountain High School freshman Briannah Letter didn’t advance past the state finals this year, but she still got something out of the experience. Poetry Out Loud is also a chance to practice something many students dread — public speaking.

“You should’ve seen me right before I went up for the school competition. My heart was pounding. I was breathing really heavily,” Letter said. “I realized that after the school competition and the district competition, I felt a lot better standing in front of those people. After this, I’ll be a lot more comfortable with my voice through a microphone and talking to people in general.”

Letter’s mentor, Thunder Mountain English teacher Barbara Maier, said Poetry Out Loud is about encouraging students to develop memorization, analysis, and public speaking skills.

“Kids grow just by standing up and presenting something to their peers,” Maier said. “Poetry Out Loud is a defined list of poems that have been chosen because they can be presented well. There’s that safety that no matter what they choose there’s something in that poem that a kid has to discover. They’re digging into really good literature and then playing with it standing up and presenting.”

And, for Letter, it started out as a finals week assignment. By February, Letter had advanced through school and district Poetry Out Loud competitions, beating out more than 50 students for the chance to represent Juneau at the state competition.

With finalists traveling from as far away as Shaktoolik and Unalaska, the state finals were also a chance to visit the capital city. Before the competition, finalists heard guest lectures from local artists, visited state representatives at the Capitol, and toured the Governor’s Mansion.

Alaska state champion Shannon Croft heads to Washington, D.C., for the Poetry Out Loud national finals May 2 to 4. Croft will represent Alaska and defend Ordaz’s title.

Illuminated by a single light, a four-piece band sets up inside the wheelhouse of a fishing boat moored in Juneau’s Harris Harbor.

“We’re Goldwing, and this is a fisherman’s desk,” said Dan Kirkwood before the song begins.

Kirkwood fronts the band competing in NPR Music’s video competition to discover the next great performer to play the Tiny Desk.

“You end up with one light, the light just above the helm. You can see that it’s a gray day in Juneau. You can see the forward leaning windows of the wheelhouse and the actual helm,” said Kirkwood of the band’s submission. “It feels like Juneau.”

Goldwing was one of 25 Alaska bands who submitted videos of their original music to NPR’s Tiny Desk contest.

Today, NPR Music announced that Duluth, Minnesota’s Gaelynn Lea beat out 6,000 other contestants to become the winner of the second-ever Tiny Desk contest. Lea will tour the country, appear on the NPR program Ask Me Another, and of course, play a coveted Tiny Desk concert at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C.

What about Goldwing’s fisherman’s desk? That’s part of the contest rules. All videos must take place at a desk — any desk — emulating Bob Boilen’s in D.C. Since 2008, Boilen’s desk has been host to nearly 500 intimate performances from Yo-Yo Ma and Death Cab for Cutie to Adele.

From Bethel to Fairbanks, Anchorage to the Big Island of Hawaii, bands showcase their original songs written in and inspired by the Last Frontier.

For second-year contestants Emma Hill and Brian Daste, the contest was about overcoming geographic distance to create their video for their song “A Long Way to Run.” With Hill in Hawaii and Daste in Oregon during the submission period, recording together meant that Daste taught himself to use green screen technology to create the illusion of performing in the same place.

“No matter what we did it was probably going to come off as a little wacky, but just wanting to do it anyway just for fun. And honestly, mostly so that Brian could have fun playing around with green screen,” Hill said.

Anchorage-based musician Hannah Yoter saw the contest as an opportunity to make a video for one of her newer songs “A Million Tears.” Her five-piece ensemble recorded the song in a band member’s office with the help of a tech-savvy friend.

“It’s really nice to not only have audio but to actually have a video where you can watch the band and you can see them playing — just to have something more than just an iPhone video at a concert.”

With plans to record a full length album in April, the band’s already getting a response from NPR’s national audience.

“Right after we posted the video we were contacted by multiple people about multiple gigs, people we’ve never met before,” said Yoter. “The NPR tag on it makes it available to a broader spectrum of folks. It’s getting a lot of exposure to places we never thought it would. There’s only so far you can go in Alaska.”

Though the path from Alaska to the Tiny Desk in D.C. is still long, the contest brought 25 Alaska artists a little closer. You can watch all of their video submissions in this playlist.