SLAMbassadors UK

The Poetry Society has had a very difficult job choosing from 400+ entries to this year’s competition and is pleased to announce the winners of SLAMbassadors UK 2010 – click on the names to watch their entries:

Antel Abada

Hezhenyi Cao

Hal Husbands

Remi Jackson

Vanessa Kisuule

Catherine Labiran

Lily Morris

Jamal Msebele

Tiana Oldroyd

Yahael Onono

This year, there is also a group of Commended Poets who will be hearing from us in due course. Well done to everyone who entered the competition – judges Adisa and Joelle Taylor have been astounded by your entries and urge you to keep writing and performing your work.

The 2010 SLAMbassadors UK Championship closes for entries on Friday 10th December at 5pm so you don’t have very much longer to enter! We’ve already had some fantastic entries so what are you waiting for?!

Visit here to enter. And see here for entries to date and inspiration.

Last night, young performance poets from Buckinghamshire raised the roof of the Wycombe Swan with their incredible verbal acrobatics. Over 50 young people who had taken part in SLAMbassadors UK workshops across the county performed their poems to an audience of nearly 500 people, including the High Sherriff and Deputy Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire and the Mayor of Chesham. SLAMbassadors Artistic Director Joelle Taylor and performance poet Kayo Chingonyi ran workshops in the area during the autumn with over 200 young people, and participants were selected to perform live at the Buckinghamshire SLAMbassadors Championship.

And the Overall Winners of the Buckinghamshire Regional SLAMbassadors Championship are:

Ru Guramatunhu and Sharda Titre (The Grange School)

Runner Up

Layla Holmes (The Grange School)

Plus,

Award for Outstanding Contribution to SLAMbassadors UK:

- Alfriston Allstars (Alfriston School)

- Tamoor Ahmed, Zain Asif and Krystal Glasgow Mills (Cressex Community School)

Competition is hotting up now – will Buckinghamshire poets make it into the final SLAMbassadors UK winners? Will lyrics from Liverpool take the trophy or will bars from Brixton come out on top? You have until 5pm on Friday 10^th December to send us your entry to be in with a chance of being crowned SLAMbassadors UK Champions 2010. Enter here and see entries to date here.

Photograph credit – Hayley Madden:
l-r
Adisa the Verbalizer (Judge), Ru Guramatunhu (Winner), Lady Hatch (Deputy Lieutenant for Buckinghamshire), Sharda Titre (Winner), Countess Howe (High Sherriff of Buckinghamshire), Jane Bramwell, Mayor of Chesham, Layla Holmes (Runner Up), Councillor David Polhill and Joelle Taylor, SLAMbassadors Artistic Director on the front row.

A one-night-only showcase event featuring young people from Buckinghamshire performing their own exciting poetry takes place on Tuesday 23 November at the Wycombe Swan Theatre.

The showcase event follows a series of workshops held in partnerships with Buckinghamshire County Council involving over 200 pupils from 18 local schools, as part of the Poetry Society’s pioneering performance poetry championship, SLAMbassadors UK.

The young writers will be performing their work at the showcase event alongside the professional performance poets Joelle Taylor, Adisa the Verbalizer and Kayo Chingonyi.

Tickets are priced at only £3.50 and are selling fast from the Swan Theatre’s box office, by phone on 01494 512000, or book online at their website here.

You can see one of the Bucks videos here!:

For the third year running, the Poetry Society has joined forces with Writing on the Wall to put a call out to all Liverpool young poets.  Spoken word artist Nikki Blaze will run a FREE workshop to help them sharpen up their writing and performance skills at the Black-E Arts Centre on Saturday 30 October 2010. Anyone taking part will automatically be entered into SLAMbassadors UK. Contact Bea Colley by emailing here or calling 020 7420 9894 to book your place!