LOUD POETS:
SLAM SERIES 2024
TICKETS:
East Heat - 09/03/24 - StAnza: Scotland’s International Poetry Festival
Central Heat - 19/04/24 - Scottish Storytelling Centre
West Heat - 27/04/24 - Paisley Book Festival
South Heat - 24/05/24 - Dumfries & Galloway Arts Festival
North Heat - 20/06/24 - Lemon Tree, Aberdeen Performing Arts
Highlands - July - Inverness (DETAILS COMING SOON)
Grand Slam Final - August - Edinburgh (DETAILS COMING SOON)
2024 SLAM SERIES:
Fresh from the success of our award-winning 2023 Slam Series, we’re back for another exciting national poetry slam tournament! For our 2024 Slam Series we’re partnering with festivals and venues across the country to find and celebrate the best in Scottish spoken word. From March-July we’re holding six regional slam heats, in St. Andrews, Edinburgh, Paisley, Dumfries, Aberdeen, and Inverness. The winner of each heat will receive a £200 cash prize and, alongside the runner-up, will qualify for our Grand Slam Final which will take place in Edinburgh in August with a huge cash prize!
Our 2023 Slam Series was awarded Best Regular Spoken Word Event in the UK at the Saboteur Awards, and our 2023 Grand Slam Final with the Edinburgh International Book Festival won the Creative Edinburgh Collaboration Award. We can’t wait to keep that momentum rolling in 2024 and showcase more of Scotland’s fantastic spoken word scene!
TAKING PART:
Each regional slam heat will feature 9-12 competitors and will be divided into three rounds. In each round every poet will have a maximum of 3 minutes at the mic to perform a single original poem (different poem each round).
The winner of each regional slam heat will receive a £200 prize. Both the winner and the runner-up will qualify for our Grand Slam Final which will take place in Edinburgh in August with a huge cash prize! Stay tuned for more details on the Grand Slam Final coming soon.
To sign up, simply click below on the heat you wish to take part in and fill out the Google Form. All entrants must be 18 or over due to licensing rules in venues. Details on the deadlines for entry and when you’ll be informed if your name has been drawn are available in each of the Google Forms.
LOUD POETS:
SLAM SERIES 2023
Our 2023 Slam Series was a smashing success! From February through July 2023 we held six poetry slam heats across Scotland, in Greenock, Dumfries, Dundee, Inverness, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh. The winner of each heat won £200 and, alongside the runner-up, qualified for our 2023 Grand Slam Final in August with the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The competition was stiff, but in the end RJ Hunter took home the £3,000 cash prize!
Our 2023 Slam Series was awarded Best Regular Spoken Word Event in the UK at the Saboteur Awards. Our 2023 Grand Slam Final with the Edinburgh International Book Festival won the Creative Edinburgh Collaboration Award. We’re very proud that the poem that won the inaugural 2023 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem - Performed was performed at our Slam Series: Bohdan Piasecki earned the award for his stellar performance of “Almost Certainly” with our guitarist Jack Hinks.
‘[I Am Loud] are (to some extent) the last proper Scottish spoken-word event organisers, show-runners and platformers standing, and it is a joy to see their years of hard and often overlooked and unrewarded toil finally pay off with slam poetry’s accession to the biggest of Edinburgh International Book Festival stages, in front of a sold-out, 300-strong crowd who were in rapturous voice throughout.’ - Glasgow Review of Books on the 2023 Grand Slam Final
Click below for videos of each full regional heat, and watch the full Grand Slam Final here.
