With 15 days to go until Poemdemonium makes its way into the world, here at HQ we’ve been all go, go, go! But we did take some time out to attend the Belfast Book Festival Poetry Slam hosted by Poetry NI which is always a highlight of the festival itself! The winner of the Slam was to take home the Brian Bailey memorial cup. Brian was a spearhead of developing the Poetry scene in Northern Ireland and we heard some moving words from his family and friends who also read some of his poetry.Nathan also decided he would enter the slam and read some of his own work and with that the stage was set!
After a lengthy first round with I’d say somewhere between 20-30 readers, there was a short interval – which we used to hand out some flyers and speak with other poets about Poemdemonium – if you spoke to us, Hi, it was lovely to meet you! After the interval, Colin Dardis of Poetry NI gave us a quick shout-out and his interesting way of remembering how to say Poemdemonium – Thanks Colin!
8 poets were called back for the second round of the Slam and Nathan was one of them to both of our delight! The were all very very good and I would certainly not of liked to have been one of the judges because the quality was so high! After another quick interval, only 4 poets made it to the final round! Once again, Nathan was one of them! We were both very excited about this! His final poem was called Moth Music and you can hear it in the video below: –
What a tough job the judges had choosing between the four finalists who were David Braziel, Patricia-Devlin Hill, Anthony Ferguson and of course Co-organiser of Poemdemonium, Nathan-Elout Armstrong. In the end the winner was……
David Braziel! With Patricia taking 2nd, Nathan taking 3rd and Anthony 4th! Congratulations to all of you though, you were all brilliant and of course if you want to come share more of your brilliant poetry at Poemdemonium, we’d love to have you!
It was a great night and we are both very much looking forward to having more poetry in our lives on June 29th! If you are interested in hearing poetry, a bit of prose or even a bit of music then please come join us in The Black Box! Tickets, as always are available to buy here.
With just 15 days to go, you’ll be hearing from us a lot more regularly, a few poems from ourselves and a few bits and pieces in between! If you have any questions, queries or comments about Poemdemonium, please don’t hesitate to contact us!
Now, back to the organising we go!
