And the winner of the Belfast Book Festival Poetry Slam 2015 is...

What a night we had at the Crescent Arts Centre! Poets galore and a packed house, all seeing who would walk away with the title of Belfast Book Festival Slam Champion 2015!

First of all, we want to thank and honour all our entrants for sharing their work and threading the boards. Altogether, competing in the first round, we had:
Joan Jewel, Patricia Devlin-Hill, Ray Givans, Tanya Hanna, Jessica Radermacher, Ross Thompson, William Donnelly, Jason Ashford, Mary Glover, Emma Mckervey, David Davies, Yvonne Boyle, Andrew Ward, Lara Sunday, Denise McGeown, Lesley Johnston, Jenny Cleland, David Braziel, Peter Francis Fahy, Elizabeth McGeown, Stephen Hall and Joy McKay.

Of those 22 entrants, the 8 that got through to the second round were:
Ray Givans, Tanya Hanna, Ross Thompson, William Donnelly, Jason Ashford, Jenny Cleland, David Braziel and Peter Francis Fahy.

And competing in the final, our four poets were:
In four place, Jenny Cleland;
In third place, Ray Givans,
In second place, Ross Thompson;

...which means, amazingly, defending his title successfully and becoming our 2015 Slam Champion, our winner is DAVID BRAZIEL!

Well done and congratulations to David, all the finalists, and indeed all the wonderful poets that took parts. Our judges (Judith Lowans Thurley, Geraldine O'Kane, Mark Cooper and David Smylie) commented that the standard was incredibly high throughout and that the scoring was very close.

Thank you to our judges, to the staff and volunteers at the Crescent and the hard-working festival team, and most of all, to everyone who came along last night, clapped and cheered, and supported live poetry in Belfast. We're blessed to have you at our event.

Our next open mic night is on Friday 3rd July at 9.30pm in the Crescent, we hope to see you there!

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