Winners of Belfast and Strabane Heats of All Ireland Poetry Slam announced

Well, what a night that was! Two slams running concurrently in Belfast and Strabane, both regional heats for the All Ireland Poetry Slam. First stop: Belfast.

First of all: what a crowd. We were SOLD OUT, at maximum capacity. The reception at Crescent Arts Centre even ran out of tickets to print, that's how awesome YOU were in coming out and supporting all the poets. Thank you so much. And then of course, we had the poets!

Competing in the first round, we had:
Peter Adair, Patricia Devlin-Hill, David Davies, Joan Jewel, Sarah R'dek, Dympha Ferran, Ruby Sinnamon, Andrew Beattie and Michael Walker.

Our semi-finalists included:
Michael Wilson, Elizabeth McGeown, Tanya Hanna and Anthony Ferguson...

And our four finalists...
Fourth place went to: Ray Givans
Third place: Dave Wilson (his first time EVER reading in public, what a night for him!)
Second place, and first Belfast representative for the All Ulster Final: David Braziel
And joining David in the Ulster stage, our BELFAST SLAM CHAMPION 2015 is Rory Jones!

Well done to everyone. Rory and David now go onto the Ulster stage in Enniskillen on Friday 2nd October, competing against all the other Ulster winners for a chance in the grand final where the top eight poets from around Ireland (two from each province). will slam to find out the overall winner. We've provisionally booked the final for 27th November, happening in Belfast, and we've have more details and confirmation of that very soon.

Joining David and Rory will be STRABANE SLAM CHAMPION 2015 Mel Bradley and runner up Lynn Mary-Lou! Well done to all of you, and many thanks go to Chris McLaughlin for running our Strabane leg of the competition.

We're having another chance for two poets to get through to the All-Ulster stage at Aspects Festival, where we will host the North Down heat on Saturday 26th September. Look out for the event page and more details on here shortly

A big thanks also to the teams at the Crescent Arts Centre and The Alley Theatre for their support in running both gigs. And to our guest judges in Belfast, Mark Cooper and David Smylie.