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Saturday, August 9, 2025

2021 Poetry Slam goes virtual

by

1475 days ago
20210725

The 2021 First Cit­i­zens Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam au­di­tion round is to­tal­ly vir­tu­al. The Zoom plat­form has be­come the new au­di­tion stage for po­ets across the coun­try en­ter­ing the largest spo­ken word chal­lenge in the Caribbean.

With the last round of au­di­tions held on Sat­ur­day, the Slam, now in its ninth year, re­turns to prove that Po­et­ry is Re­silience with its usu­al $50,000 first place prize up for grabs un­der the proud spon­sor­ship of First Cit­i­zens. It re­mains one of the high­est val­ue awards for spo­ken word artists in the world, and a tes­ta­ment to the light-bear­er role of artistes in the pan­dem­ic.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions ex­pert Denise Dem­ming, Arielle John, spo­ken word artist, co­me­di­an Kwame Weekes, pres­i­dent of the Cir­cle of Po­ets Nicholas Sosa, and Marge Black­man, singer/song­writer, were the judges for the au­di­tion.

In 2020, the First Cit­i­zens Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam (FC­NPS) au­di­tions oc­curred in four lo­ca­tions across the coun­try and in To­ba­go, be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic halt­ed phys­i­cal events. The semi­fi­nals and fi­nals were tele­vised and broad­cast to the pub­lic for free. This year, ad­her­ing to lock­down re­stric­tions, par­tic­i­pants reg­is­tered for in­di­vid­ual time slots to per­form their au­di­tion pieces in re­al time.

Ti­tle spon­sor First Cit­i­zens and Slam pro­duc­er The Bo­cas Lit Fest will part­ner with TTT, as part of its thrust to show­case qual­i­ty lo­cal pro­gram­ming, to broad­cast the next stages of this year’s Slam on tele­vi­sion and via livestream on their Face­book page.

The semi­fi­nals are set to air on Au­gust 22 and 28, and the fi­nal is sched­uled for Oc­to­ber.

The 2021 theme Po­et­ry is Re­silience plays on the idea of artistes and art en­dur­ing and find­ing new ways to ex­ist through the pan­dem­ic and ex­plores new de­f­i­n­i­tions of po­et­ry with ex­ist­ing au­di­ences and with those new to the art form. As a pi­o­neer­ing, ful­ly vir­tu­al event, this year’s slam demon­strates re­silience in the face of the pan­dem­ic.

Pro­fes­sor Ster­ling Frost, Deputy CEO—Op­er­a­tions & Ad­min­is­tra­tion of First Cit­i­zens, shared that “First Cit­i­zens re­mains a proud part­ner of the Bo­cas Lit Fest, hav­ing worked to­geth­er for al­most a decade to build what has un­doubt­ed­ly be­come the pre­mier po­et­ry event on our lo­cal cal­en­dar. We con­grat­u­late the Bo­cas com­mit­tee for apt­ly demon­strat­ing their own re­silience, by em­brac­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to forge a new par­a­digm for the event, with this com­plete­ly vir­tu­al 2021 edi­tion.”

Bo­cas Lit Fest founder Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown ac­knowl­edged the con­tin­ued ded­i­ca­tion to spo­ken word as a plat­form for so­cial change. “From 2013 to now, de­spite chang­ing cir­cum­stances, set­tings, and for­mat, one thing has nev­er changed—the qual­i­ty of the artistry of the par­tic­i­pants in the an­nu­al Slam. We’re very hap­py that it’s still grow­ing and has proven sus­tain­able de­spite the pan­dem­ic’s un­cer­tain­ty, with the sup­port of our po­ets and artist com­mu­ni­ty, and the back­ing of First Cit­i­zens.”

• For more in­for­ma­tion, vis­it www.bo­caslit­fest.com/youth/po­et­ry-slam/ or the Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam Face­bookIn­sta­gram and Twit­ter pages - @na­tion­alpo­et­rys­lamtt.


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