The stakes were high, but StAnza won yesterday’s brilliant Poetry Cyber Slam. Click here to see the results. The team comprised Milton Balgoni as MC, Robin Cairns, Claudia Daventry, Ali ‘Harlequinade’ Maloney and Kevin Cadwallender. The team from Melbourne’s Overload Poetry Festival was led by Santo Cazzati as MC, with Ezra Bix, Benjamin IQ Sanders, and two poets, Graham and Andrea, who had come through during earlier heats in Melbourne.
Melbourne's Ezra Bix performs.
Round one gave the poets a chance to show off their best work and Kevin Cadwallender’s ‘Dalek’ poem (with Dalek impersonation) went down a storm with the Melbourne and St Andrews audiences. Round two was themed around respective countries, making for some great jokes about stereotypes, and round three was a team effort, providing the poets with a new challenge.
While Scotland and Australia are used to competing on the rugby field, the prospect of a Skype Slam between poets from both nations opened up all sorts of exciting possibilities, not least being able to webcast vibrant live poetry to a world audience. We are waiting for the confirmed numbers of those who followed the event online but they look to be healthy. Comments made via Twitter praised the quality of the webcast and of the poetry performed.
Sticking to that sporting theme, now that StAnza (and Scotland) have taken poetry’s equivalent of the Ashes, a rematch could well be in the offing…
the StAnza Blog 