This is a pre-festival event to give BC youth one last chance to gain a spot in Hullabaloo as a poet competitor. Francis Arevalo (2-time Vancouver Youth Slam Team member) will be our feature performer.
BC youth who are 14–18 years old are eligible to compete so long as you are not on a team that is registered in Hullabaloo and have not yet graduated high school. 16 individual spots are available in the first round for poets to perform a 3-minute poem. The top 8 highest-scoring poets advance to the second round. In the second round, they must perform a different 3-minute poem. The top 4 highest-scoring poets in the second round will form the Wild Card Team and be automatically registered in Hullabaloo.
Sign up in advance to compete in this Last Chance Slam by emailing hello@vancouverpoetryhouse.com with your name, your age, and your school.
Regular poetry slam rules apply: no props, no musical accompaniment (other than music you can make with your body, beatboxing, singing, clapping…), no costumes, and keep the animal acts for another time. Just the poet, their words and their performance.
To sign-up as a youth competitor, you must sign up in advance or show up at the venue between 7pm-7:30pm, and enter your name.
If more than 16 youth poets enter their names, then there will be a random draw to select the 16 poets in the slam. This ensures that no poet receives preferred treatment, and all youth poets have an equal chance to participate. This process is also in accordance with the democratic principles that poetry slam is based upon.
The Wild Card Team becomes the 16th team in Hullabaloo, The BC Youth Slam Championships. These four poets will have to work together to prepare for the preliminary team bouts, which happen the next two days, April 10th and 11th, at the Vancouver Art Gallery. They will have to come up with two group pieces for these bouts, a great challenge in artistic collaboration.
Hullabaloo happens the week afterward, April 10th-14th, at Cafe Deux Soleils, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The Rio Theatre, and the Granville Island Stage.
About Francis Arevalo
Francis is a two-time member of the Vancouver Youth Slam Team, a Wordplay workshop leader, a graduate from the East Van Cultural Centre’s IGNITE! Spoken Word Intensive, founder of the “Speak!” talent showcase, a member of the touring spoken word Candelabra Collective, 2009 Vancouver Youth Slam Champion, and a 2011 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Finalist. Francis published a poetry collection in 2011 entitled This, That, and Whatever. In addition to his poetic works, Arevalo is also a budding photographer and a TedXKids’s speaker.