Poetry Slam Contest manana

ALS ANNOUNCES N30, 000 POETRY SLAM CONTEST

By Jerry Adesewo

The trendy Abuja Poetry Slam continues this quarter with a competition set for Friday 1st May 2009 at the Transcorp Hilton Hotel at 7p.m. the winning prize is Thirty Thousand Naira, the highest so far in the five-year history of the event in Nigeria.

According to the Slam Master, Ken Ike Okere, the slam is planned for the May Day holiday to enable people have plenty of time and be relaxed for the usually fun-filled spoken word contest.

The Abuja Poetry Slam is an Abuja Literary Society initiative aimed at promoting the art and power of the spoken word otherwise known as performance poetry. The quarterly slam is usually rounded up with a Grand Slam in December of each year where all the Slam Champions slug it out poetically. Ekene Atusiuba, popularly known as Poet for Life, and the Storyteller are currently the two Grand Champions of the Poetry Slam. The Storyteller has built on his early potentials and visibility gained at the ALS to become a rising star in the spoken word and musical circuits.

In the competition, poets must perform their own works, without props or costume, to an audience who score them; the champion emerges after three or four rounds of scintillating performances. The audience-judges score the poets based on content and performance.

Started in 2004, by the slam master, the Abuja poetry slam has been won by several talented and popular up-coming poets such as Dekmankind, Halima Ali and Toby Nduekwelu, the current slam champion. Ken Ike, the Slam Master, told this reporter that the Slam has helped to promote and inspire creative expression in Abuja as well as reward popular poetry performed excellently. Performance poetry, he said, helps to move modern poetry away from obscure, dry academic chambers back to the people for whom it had been a part of their traditional
entertainment.

The slam is part of the bouquet of offerings by which the Abuja Literary Society which set for itself the task of generating and sustaining a literary culture, and the creation of an alternative literary-based entertainment in Nigeria’s nascent and formerly art-starved Federal Capital City. Founded in 1999, the ALS quickly attracted the corps of resident and visiting writers and literary
enthusiasts in the FCT.

Today, it is the foremost literary NGO in the city, and has led to the burgeoning of literary groups in the city. Now in Abuja, there are literary readings, guest writer fora, arts and writing competitions, and open mike readings several times a month in various venues around the city. In recognition and commendation of the slam master, Ken Ike Okere, as a change maker and social entrepreneur, the Washington DC based Ashoka Foundation awarded him the prestigious Ashoka Fellowship in 2008.