Well done to all our entrants from last night at the Aspects Poetry Slam! We're very happy to have had our first event in Bangor and many thanks to the Aspects Festival team and The Rabbit Rooms for having us.

We had a lot of great entrants, some reading for the first time in a slam, so an extra round of applause for them! The standard was very high; the second round was very tight, and was probably overall the highest-scoring second round that I've seen in a slam.

In 3rd place: Rachel Hedley (reading in her first slam event);

2nd: Michael Wilson;

and our Aspects Festival Slam Champion of 2014 is David Braziel!

If you attended the event and enjoyed it, please let Aspects know, and hopefully we will be back next year.

Issue 10 of FourXFour Poetry Journal will be out on National Poetry Day, Thursday 2nd October.

Our new issue features work from Ruth Carr, Damian Gorman, Judith Thurley and Michael Wilson.

The Rabbit Rooms , Bangor
8pm  £5/£4 conc

The Aspects Poetry Slam

Bangor’s first ever poetry slam hosted by Poetry NI.

Bring your poems from page to stage and enter our live event, at which poets read / recite original work.


Just register at the start of the night if you want to read, and names will be drawn out from the hat at random throughout the night. You have three minutes to compete in, and our judges will score who goes through to the next round. To tie in with the festival’s theme of ‘War’, we ask that the poem you read in the first round be on this topic, however you want to interpret it!

There are three rounds in all, and the outright winner will be crowned ‘Aspects Poetry Slam Champion’!

We had a crowd of 70 last night, which was full capacity! A big shout out to all our great readers from last night:
David Smylie, Mark Cooper, Tom Oyster, Caly, Jemima Higgins, Jo McParland, Davy Eager, Aoife Walls, Joan Faith, Geraldine O'Kane, Andy Ward, David Braziel, Kirstine Elizabeth Jane Boyd, Niamh Curran, Brenda Liddy, Jenny Cleland, John Mc Guckin, Karen Porter, Kudzanayi, Willetta Fleming, Lara Sunday, David Davies, Jason Ashford, Niall McGrath and Mary Feeney.

We had a lot of new faces last night, so well done to all of our first timers who braved the mic and shared their work, it was wonderful to hear you.

We also have two new firsts for Purely Poetry: a mother and daughter reading, from Karen and Kudzanayi, and a live poetry translation, courtesy of Lara and her German friend, Vivi.

Apologies also to those who wanted to read, but we just didn't have room for. We hate turning people away, so make sure you get down early next time to sign up!

Please join us again next month, when it is the Belfast Heat of the All Ireland Poetry Slam ... more details about that soon.