Belfast heat of the 2014 All Ireland Poetry Slam: results

It was a successful local heat of the All Ireland Poetry Slam, with amazing work throughout all the rounds.This was something special.

Thank you to all our entrants, all our audience, and to Crescent Arts Centre for an amazing night of poetry. Indeed, than you for supporting us for the last three years, we had a great third birthday!

Well done to our finalists, Stephen Omar Gharbaoui, Jenny Cleland, Chris McLaughlin and our winner, 2014 Slam Champion, David Braziell!

David is certainly on something of a roll, winning the Bangor slam at Aspects Festival last week as well. We wish him all the best in the final in Kilkenny next month. And we have to feel for Chris; this is his third time in coming second, and he is definitely one of our top poets out there.

We also want to thank and congratulation the other semi-finalists: Megan Reeves, Lara Sunday, Katy Waller and Patricia Devlin-Hill. Well done!

We've been to a few slams around Ireland now with this competition, and heard a lot of great poets. But without doubt, when it comes to the actual craft of poetry, the composition and use of language, it's our feeling that the Belfast scene is the strongest out there. A long time criticism of slam poetry is that it's gimmicky: poorly-written, hammy, shouted verse. And while of course some of that will always be present in any spoken word scene, we feel we're happily proven the critics wrong. Thanks to all of you for sharing your work last night.

Our next event is Friday 7th November, returning to your normal open mic night. We hope to see you there.