Last week was the final of the 2013 Roundhouse Poetry Slam, and it was an even higher standard than my heat the week before. And that was high! Like, don’t-look-down high. Honestly. If you don’t believe me, here are the names of every finalist. Go and check them out and then tell me they aren’t excellent. Look me in the eye and say it. See, you can’t. They were (and hopefully still are) Charlotte Higgins, Maria Ferguson, Laurie Bolger, Alastair Gray, Nicola Williams, Georgina Norie, Christopher Lawrence, Damilola, Jamal, Antosh Wojcik and Ronak Patani. Everyone smashed it. Then they took the broken pieces and ground them into a fine dust, which, like faeries, they sprinkled magically over the heads of an entranced audience. And it was live-streamed too, so a little bit of that magic dust made its wicked way into eyes and ears and innocent people’s homes the world over. If you want to watch the whole event and pretend it is about 7:42pm on Wednesday 28th August 2013, then you can, here:
Or, if you don’t have a spare two and half hours to watch and admire Polarbear‘s sparse compering style, then the Roundhouse were kind enough to make one poem each of both winners and me, the runner-up, into individual videos. Here’s one joint-winner Antosh Wojcik doing his fantastic thing:
And here’s Ronak Patani, the other joint-winner, doing his brilliant thing:
And here’s me doing my thing (a thing called ‘Gravity‘, if you’re interested):
Congratulations and love to Antosh and Ronak, and to all the other finalists. I had a ball.
Ben Norris 