Introducing a brand new youth poetry slam at a brand new location with a brand new time. This event will be the perfect place for established youth poets to perform their poems in front of a new audience and for new poets to work up the courage to test out their poems. It is open to all youth poets 13-19 years of age. IT IS A FREE EVENT.

This even also includes a workshop with an established poet before the slam to hone your poems or write new ones to perform.

The workshop starts at 5:30 and the poetry slam will start before 7pm. We would like to make it a prerequisite you attend the workshop if you are going to compete in the slam. I don’t know how that will work but I’d like to try it.

There will be two rounds of competition with a short 3 poem mini feature.

Our inaugural feature and workshop leader is Dia Wren Davina.

“A queer, genderqueer, feminist, consent-activist, Dia is known for their raw, honest style of outspoken word that is equal parts art and social activism. After finding slam poetry in December 2012, Dia shimmy-shook their way in deep, recently winning fourth place in the Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Championships. As a program facilitator, youth worker and artist, Dia focuses their energy on cultivating creative, engaged communities and sparking crucial social dialogue. They feel equally (albeit differently) passionate about intersectionality and bow ties, and both feature strongly in their poetry and their everyday life. If you give them an open heart and mind, they will spill their messy guts all over a stage in hopes that you’ll recognize a little piece of yourself in there somewhere. As a white settler, they currently reside on Unceded Coast Salish Territories (Vancouver).”

Sign up in advance is preferred. Otherwise it will happen just before the workshop. If you take the workshop you don’t have to perform but if you want to perform you need to take the workshop.

This event is open to youth poets 13-19 years of age.

IT IS FREE TO ATTEND