NEXT ROUND(S):

Thursday, March 31 (DATE CHANGE)
Slam at 8pm at the Red Dog
followed by
...Beats 4 Justice 4 Levi http://www.justiceforlevi.org/

Saturday, April 30
Slam at 8pm at the Cannery
Featuring Barbara Adler http://www.myspace.com/barbaraadler
and Braveheart jazz trio www.myspace.com/braveheartjazz

The best performance poets in Peterborough will be representing at the national slam in Toronto next October. Want to compete for the team? You need to have competed in at least one slam in the current Peterborough Poetry Slam season. That means you have two chances left - March and April. The May slam will be the finals, in which the top five poets form the official Peterborough Slam Team for 2011. For more information about the competition, contact ptbopoetryslam@gmail.com

For those haven't been before, a poetry slam is a mock competition between poets. There are two rounds of 8-12 poets, who each perform a poem and are then given a score from 1.0 (meh) - 10.0 (fuck yeah!) by a panel of five randomly selected audience judges. Often emotionally and politically charged, the audience is expected and allowed to cheer and jeer the judges and the poets and each other. Expect any and all styles of poetry from folk ballads to hip-hop. And remember - the points aren't the point, the poetry is the point!

FEB 24 th SLAM with OPEN SECRET

Hi Slammers and Poetry Lovers, We've got a special treat for you this month - 2 time National Slam Champion, Open Secret!!! The Slam starts at 8, sign up is at 7:30, and don't forget if your thinking about going for the Slam Team this year you need to slam at least once between now and the finals in May. But even if you're not interested in the team, come out, sign up, and share. It's gonna be a good one! Ikenna “OpenSecret” Onyegbula has been a spoken word artist for a little more than three years now. In that time, he has been a 2-time Canadian National Slam Champion and a 3-time finalist at the national level. In April 2011, he will serve as Ottawa’s representative at the inaugural Canadian Individual Slam Poetry Finals in Vancouver, BC. As a member of the acclaimed four member spoken word troupe, The Recipe, Ikenna has performed extensively throughout Canada, touring and opening for K-OS and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, while sharing the stage with such spoken word heavyweights as Amir Sulaiman, Shihan and Black Ice. As an avid writer, he has self-published two chapbooks, Until and September, while working on his first full anthology of poetry and on a novel: a creative work of fiction, entitled Quietus, which he hopes to one day get professionally published. As a human being, he's pretty dope. And you want to get to know him. You just don't know it yet.