Rachael Es­pinet

Ak­ile Wal­lace, a found­ing mem­ber of the 2Cents Move­ment was crowned the new Monarch of Spo­ken Word Po­et­ry on Sun­day at the Vers­es Bo­ca Po­et­ry Slam com­pe­ti­tion at the Globe The­atre, Port-of-Spain.Wal­lace, who cham­pi­oned the rights of squat­ters, placed first among a fierce com­pe­ti­tion of 13 po­ets vy­ing to be named the best spo­ken word artist in the coun­try. Vers­es was the fi­nal event of the Bo­cas Lit Fest which took place last week at Nalis Port-of-Spain.

Each po­et brought a dis­tinct flair of their own as they talked about is­sues that deeply mat­tered to them. Some of the is­sues dis­cussed ranged from cur­rent af­fairs, tor­rid love af­fairs, the ques­tion sur­round­ing moral­i­ty, fam­i­ly, street ha­rass­ment and what it means to be a writer.Wal­lace said when he saw the oth­er per­for­mances, he did not ex­pect to win, so his win was a sur­prise.

"I feel amaz­ing. Es­pe­cial­ly lis­ten­ing to all the oth­er per­form­ers in the mo­ment, I thought I wouldn't even place," he said.He said he was orig­i­nal­ly asked last year to write a po­em against squat­ting, but he could not be­cause he found it un­fair and prej­u­diced. In­stead, he de­cid­ed to write po­em dis­cussing both sides of the ar­gu­ment.

"One day I was asked to write a piece on squat­ting for an event. They want­ed a piece against squat­ting. When I thought about the is­sue I re­alised that I did not be­lieve squat­ters were to­tal­ly in the wrong, so I de­cid­ed to write a bal­anced piece," Wal­lace said.While he did not per­form that piece for that show, Wal­lace kept the po­em and kept on rewrit­ing the piece un­til he got the draft he de­liv­ered on Sun­day night. Wal­lace has en­tered the Vers­es com­pe­ti­tion twice be­fore, plac­ing sec­ond and third.

Al­lud­ing to squat­ters from Sea Lots, Guave Road and oth­ers from around the coun­try, Wal­lace asked: "So many prob­lems go­ing on in the world, and you left all that to tell me squat­ting is wrong?"One pow­er­ful is­sue he ad­dressed was the dif­fi­cul­ty for peo­ple in the low­er so­cio-eco­nom­ic class to law­ful­ly ac­cess land of their own be­cause there is no suf­fi­cient leg­is­la­ture in place to reg­u­late hous­ing and land rates.

Sec­ond-place win­ner Der­ron Sandy was in­spired by the pop­u­lar chil­dren's movie Frozen to show how greater au­thor­i­ties try to freeze young peo­ple from be­ing suc­cess­ful and mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in the world."I was an MC at a chil­dren's par­ty in Feb­ru­ary. These chil­dren were telling me about what songs to play. I wrote a speech about them and it was for them," he said.

He used a win­ter mo­tif to dis­cuss how peo­ple are try­ing to si­lence the po­ets and the rad­i­cals of the Caribbean. One can even in­fer that his use of win­ter and ref­er­ence to the movie Frozen is a cri­tique on how neo-coloni­sa­tion from the glob­al north has in­flu­enced the coun­try and si­lenced those who want to bring about change.

"The piece is about any­body who tried to ob­struct the fu­ture by freez­ing them in some way. It could be any­thing. Rapists, mo­lesta­tion, any­thing that freezes youth and puts them in a stag­nant state, it has to be burned down through my writ­ing," Sandy said.Third-place win­ner, Kleon McPher­son placed for his fast-paced po­em on a tor­rid love af­fair that hap­pened all in a dream.

One of the crowd's favourites was Jabari Lynch, who gave poignant blows to many is­sues go­ing on in the coun­try. Lynch in­voked the essence of a Rob­ber Talk in his po­em by adopt­ing the "voice of po­et­ry" as his own."This is not Jabari, this is the voice of po­et­ry. Who dares stop me?" he con­stant­ly re­mind­ed the au­di­ence.Start­ing off, he yelled: "If I can't say cy­at then you can't say dog."

Lynch claimed that the Gov­ern­ment has been "abus­ing par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege" and be­ing "hyp­o­crit­i­cal." He ref­er­enced is­sues from the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing To­ba­go East MP Ver­nel­la Al­leyne-Top­pin who made rape al­le­ga­tions against Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley's fa­ther.Ad­dress­ing is­sues of crime in the coun­try, Lynch con­demned the judg­ments many have for those in high-crime ar­eas.

"There are no saints in this land. The state of Mor­vant/Laven­tille makes us all sin­ners," he said.Le­an­dra Williamson's po­em on writ­ers, while verged on preach­ing, dis­cussed the hu­man con­di­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly writ­ers who she claimed fed on the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers in or­der for their craft to thrive."Writ­ers all have one spe­cial thing in com­mon. We feed on the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers. With­out suf­fer­ing, what is there to write about?" she said.

The com­pe­ti­tion was judged by an im­pres­sive line-up of first-class po­ets from around the re­gion and the di­as­po­ra. They were: Ja­maica-born, prize-win­ning au­thor and po­et Olive Se­nior, pro­lif­ic Guyanese po­et and au­thor Fred D'Aguiar, this year's OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture Vladimir Lu­cien, pres­i­dent of Trinidad's Cir­cle of Po­ets Nicholas Sosa, and the head judge was Ja­maica-born Lin­ton Kwe­si John­son who is a UK-based dub po­et who is the sec­ond liv­ing po­et, and the on­ly black po­et, to be pub­lished in the Pen­guin Mod­ern Clas­sics se­ries.

One key el­e­ment of spo­ken word po­et­ry is the per­for­mance as­pect.How­ev­er, sar­to­ri­al­ly, many of the per­form­ers fell short on that el­e­ment. Lynch, for in­stance, claimed he was not "Jabari, but the voice of po­et­ry." He could have worn some­thing to show the dra­mat­ic el­e­ment of po­et­ry.His po­em em­bod­ied the essence of a rob­ber talk, and he could have put on an equal­ly dra­mat­ic cos­tume to show that.

This year's Vers­es was full of high-en­er­gy, high-qual­i­ty per­for­mances that were equal­ly thought-pro­vok­ing and en­ter­tain­ing.I look for­ward to what the next batch of com­peti­tors brings in Vers­es 2016.