WoW is delighted to be supporting the Poetry Society’s 2010 SLAMbassadors competition.

The SLAMbassadors Slam Championship is entering its ninth year of operation. Following eight years of exhilarating live events, showcasing of new talent, professional development for contestants, and the involvement of participants across a wide spectrum of faiths, backgrounds and abilities, the competition aims to involve as many young people as possible in reading, writing, and performing poetry.

Slam is the competitive art of performance poetry before a loud and lively audience. Young people across the UK are invited to enter the Championship by filming themselves performing a poem or rap piece and uploading it to our SlamCam YouTube site. The national championship is open to all 12-18 year olds living in the UK who write an original two-minute performance piece around the theme of “Identity”, exploring their place in the world. It encourages young people to reclaim their voices, edit them and amplify them to the nation.

Identity – who you are, where you have come from, what you see around you and how it affects you and others, cultural identity, national identity, human identity.

“Listening to last year’s Slam poets reinforced my belief in the power of the word. These poems were more powerful than any political speech, they were more honest than any lecture, they spoke of history, they spoke of now, and they spoke of the future. It’s our duty to write and chat our story because if we don’t, some so called expert will do it for us, and if that happens we have no right to complain.”
– Poetry Society Vice President and SLAMbassadors patron Benjamin Zephaniah

Adisa the Verbalizer will be judging this year’s SLAMbassadors Championship alongside Artistic Director Joelle Taylor. Adisa exploded onto the London performance poetry scene in 1993 and was championed as the ‘future of poetry’ by Benjamin Zephaniah.  Adisa is a keen supporter of SLAMbassadors UK and is looking forward to seeing your entries!

In preparation for SLAMbassadors, Wow will be hosting a workshop in October led by spoken word artist and international MC Nikki Blaze, details soon to be announced.

To find out how to enter SLAMbassadors click here

This page was modified on August 24, 2010