SLAMbassadors in Liverpool

From Bea Colley, Education Manager at The Poetry Society

After piloting The Poetry Society’s slam championship in Liverpool last year, SLAMbassadors UK is now nationwide and coming back to the city for more beats and rhymes. Running in partnership with BBC Blast in 2009, The Poetry Society’s centenary, this is the chance for all 13-19 year olds to take part in a workshop that could see them meeting performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah and performing live in London in the Autumn!

Young people nationwide have been taking part in slam poetry workshops with The Poetry Society’s team of performance poets. They are encouraged to write a 60 second piece around the theme of identity, perform their poem/rap to camera, then are uploaded to the BBC Blast website to be entered into the SLAMbassadors UK competition. In November, six lucky acts will be invited to attend a workshop in London with internationally renowned performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah and poet and SLAMbassadors Mentor, Joelle Taylor. They will then perform at a prestigious London venue and receive ongoing support from The Poetry Society.

On Saturday 12th September, The Poetry Society is running two workshops with kind support from the Bluecoat, for young people aged 13-19. Liverpool poet Nikki Blaze and SLAMbassadors Co-ordinator Joelle Taylor will run sessions at the Bluecoat to help you start slammin’. See our website for more information.

For more information, please call Bea Colley on 020 7420 9894 or to book your place, email: blast-liverpool@bbc.co.uk. If you would like to bring a group of young people along, please get in touch. I would be very grateful if you could pass this information on to any young people you think may be interested and do let us know if you would like us to send some flyers for you to hand out.