Australian 
Poetry Slam '08
Queensland state final
After months of battling it out across the state, Queensland’s top 16 slam poets have polished their prose and are heading to Brisbane to let their words take flight in a spectacular State Final slam-off.
The evening, hosted by award-winning poet David “Ghostboy” Stavanger, will also feature performances by acclaimed Melbourne-based spoken word artist Sean M Whelan, hard-hitting hip-hop outfit Impossible Odds, Brisbane singer-songwriter Skye Staniford, and spoken word cabaret artist Miss Tess.
After the explosive inaugural competition last year, the 2008 Australian Poetry Slam State Final promises to be an electric night of words, rhymes and beats. The State winner and runner up will go on to compete at the Sydney Opera House for the National final on Thu 4 December.
Sat 25 Oct, 7pm
Queensland Terrace, level 2, State Library of Queensland
$15 bokings qtix or 136 246
What is Poetry Slam?
Slam is an electric live event and poetry competition where anyone can perform their words. Members of the audience judge the performances.
In 1985 construction worker and poet Marc 'So What' Smith (pictured live at the QLD Poetry Festival 2006) crammed poets into Chicago jazz bar, The Get Me High, for his new creation the Poetry Slam.
Experimenters in this new style of poetry presentation gyrated, rotated, spewed, and stepped their words along the bar top, dancing between the bottles, bellowing out the backdoor, standing on the street or on their stools, turning the west side of Chicago into a rainforest of dripping whispers or a blast furnace of fiery elongated syllables, phrases, snatches of scripts, and verse that electrified the night.
Slam is open to all people and all forms of poetry including verse, comic, hip hop, spoken word monologues, beat and any other style you can imagine! Each poet gets two minutes to read one of their own poems - the poet may not use props or musical instruments - just them, slamming their words to a live audience.
Slam in Queensland
The slam scene in Queensland is now recognised as one of the most vibrant in the world.
The first big slam was held by the Queensland Poetry Festival in 2006 which built on the monthly slams that had been happening in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast since 2005, hosted by Queensland’s premier performance poetry collective, ouTsideRs. The other signature slam which runs in south east Queensland each year is the Woodford Folk Festival’s WordFood Slam.
Marc 'So What' Smith, the Slam founder, had this to say about the Queensland slam scene when he visited in 2006:
"The professionalism, audience participation, and quality of performance displayed at those events were on a par with (and in some cases exceeded) major poetry slam events around the world. Furthermore the spirit of the events were akin to the community building sentiments and intents of the original slam; they brought together people from all walks of life, all ages, and all point-of-views".
How to take part
- Rules and regulations
- Queensland heats
- Queensland workshops
- Poetry Slam 08 Partners
- Poetry Slam Coordinators
More information
- Phone: +61 7 3840 7307
- publicprograms@slq.qld.gov.au
Last updated: 25th September 2008
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