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poetry slam

Poetry Slam

National Poetry Day (NPD) held annually in October, is an opportunity for people all over the UK to take part in a celebration of great poetry. Each year, Eastside mark the occasion with our annual Poetry Slam, which is held in a major West End theatre and brings together up to 1000 primary school children from a number of local schools. Slam poetry is the competitive art of performance poetry and combines original writing with presentation skills and public speaking. The poems written by young people are judged and points are awarded for content, originality and performance. In the summer term schools are invited to participate in the project and teachers take part in a training workshop which introduces them to the fundamentals of spoken word, including beatbox and rap. Once the new academic year is underway in September, the participating schools each receive visits from some of the finest performance poets on the circuit to kick-start their celebration in order to inspire and motivate the children. These poets perform some of their own poetry in a whole school assembly before leading workshops to get the participants creating and performing their own original poems and raps. Schools then choose teams of children to represent them at the Poetry Slam. When the competition day finally arrives the participating teams battle it out in friendly rivalry , as they compete to win the trophies and poetry anthologies awarded as prizes.  The tension and enthusiasm can be felt in equal measure as the competition builds and the excitement grows. It is amazing to hear thousands of excited young voices screaming and cheering in unison for their favourites poems and young poets. The children's poems are judged by a panel of poetry experts and enthusiasts drawn from the world of arts, literature and politics. National Poetry Day 2009 will be held on Thursday, 8th October and its theme will be 'Heroes and Heroines'. Eastside organises and runs Poetry Slams for individual schools throughout the year, as well as arranging visits from our varied selection of poets and writers.