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16th June 2024 | Theodore Forcer DU Poetry Slam Captain (23/24)
Durham Poetry Slams It Out
In March, a team of five poets represented Durham at the UK’s largest slam poetry competition, UniSlam. Amongst this group of five, three students from South were in attendance.
The poetry festival, which occurs in March of each year, consists of a day of workshops with leading spoken word and page poets as well as two days of fierce competition from teams across the UK and Ireland. The competition, which is graciously hosted by Birmingham Hippodrome, attracts a diverse range of young poets to battle it out for glory.
Slam poetry is a particular type of performance poetry, where groups of four take turns to perform poetry under a three-minute time limit and are scored for their performance and quality of writing. The top scoring teams then move on to the semi-finals, then finals.
Although the Durham team didn’t make it past the heats, it was certainly an unforgettable experience.
Image: UniSlam
The finals, where the Cambridge, Royal Holloway, Warwick, and Birmingham teams competed to win prizes such as Poetry Society memberships and the title of UniSlam champions, was excellent in quality and truly represented the best that UK slam poetry has to offer. The University of Warwick took home a well-deserved, hard-fought for win in an historic turn of events in their first time attending the festival, and as the first all-black team to win the festival.
Those in attendance of the finals were treated to a wonderful performance from poet John Agard, who is perhaps most well known for his poem ‘Checking Out Me History’, which is taught as part of the GCSE poetry curriculum.
Durham Poetry Society were thrilled to be in attendance of the ‘Notes on memory’ workshop with Rishi Dastidar, which encouraged us to explore how memories can be fluid and change, and how different senses can be part of memory. We were also able to attend the ‘Write The Sin, Out?’ workshop with Yomi Ṣode which explored the role of silliness and cheesiness in poetry.
The Poetry Society were delighted to be able to attend this year’s UniSlam and look forward to attending again in 2025. The Slam Team will be opening applications for team members in the new academic year. If you want to get involved in the meantime, you can find the poetry society on Instagram (@durhampoetrysociety) and on 𝕏 (@poetrydurham) to learn more about the events that will be held over the summer term and onward.
Congratulations to the Slam Team and good luck for next year! ∎
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