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Dear Diary - Day 5 Part 2 (The Finale)

Denver VS LA VS Cape Town VS Washington DC... those were our finalists and what a final it was. 

To start the night though, in what was a really brilliant move on BNV's part, was showing a video of every team's chant (cause chants were massive!). I believe I've posted about the chants before but any excuse to link to this vid then I damn well will, it's just a brilliant thing they've been doing over there and a great thing for a team to have. (View it here)

Before I get into the finalists I'll go through the supporting performances. So for the final they kept on with their idea of having one of the best performances from the previous round opening the new one so after getting all 10's in the semi's it was Ashville opening up the final and it was another stella performance from them. The final also had the Hawaiian team do a fantastic piece about Hawaii which was really well done. (View it here) Along with the Hawaiian team they also brought out the Atlantan team. Why? Well not only cause it was a great poem (View it here) but also because next year Brave New Voices is going to A TOWN, Atlanta Georgia. The night also had a representative from Philadelphia's team getting up and performing which finished off the guests which were nicely interspersed between the finalists performances to keep the dynamic of the night.

But now the main part of the night, the actual finalists. Like with the semi finalists i'm just gonna go through each team in reverse order of how they finished and talk about them.

So in 4th place was Denver. And that's certainly not a knock on them. They were a fantastic team and very deserving of their place in the final (as shown byt hem being there clearly) and they were great in the final, but sadly for them there were 3 better teams on the night. Taking nothing away from their poems though. Their standout performance for me being their poem on Denver (View it here). 

In 3rd place was LA. I'd seen them in the Semi's so I knew they were great and they brought it again for the final. As ever they were on point and did themselves proud. There poems were consistently great and seemed to have the audience on their side. I would go into more depth about them but I talked about them in the semi's so you already know how I feel about them. Their poem on the LA shootings was probably their standout performances of the night (View it here).

In 2nd place... Cape Town. And what a story and what a festival they had. I think most people had adopted Cape Town as their second favourite team after their own and it showed in the final. The crowd gave them a lot of love and just admired how far this team had come and what they had done. They BROUGHT it in the final too which worked on getting the neutrals on their side. They deserved to be on that stage and were phenomenal. It was brilliant to hear a different set of voices performing. And this isn't a knock on anyone but hearing that much poetry over a week you start noticing some themes, especially cultural ones as these are all teams from America so that seems to seep into the poem a fair bit (wether intentionally or not) which isn't a bad thing, it happens. So Cape Town offered diversity which was refreshing but they also brought quality writing and quality performances through too. They wowed me in the quarter's when I first saw them and they wowed me again in the final with even more amazing performances, this one especially (View It Here).

Which means, in first place and the winners of Brave New Voices 2014 was Washington DC. It was a weird environment for the final as I honestly think most of the audience wanted Cape Town to win as they'd all just been charmed and won over by them. But as the night went on I think there wasn't much questioning that as charming as Cape Town were and as amazing as their writing was, Washington DC were that bit better. They brought it. Undoubtedly. Their poem Waters (View it here) just destroyed the whole room. You could feel in people's reactions how moving a poem it was and I think that prompted the first chants for "Ten's" from the judges which they did oblige with. They were the only team to to send out poems to perform individually and both those poems were just so hard hitting and powerful, with one about an unwanted Hand Job (View it here) and their closing piece about one of the teams fathers (View it here). For me though, their standout performance which won me over was their poem called "Collumbasing" (View it here). It was such a great concept and had that great balance between humour and seriousness which I personally love and won over by. They were very much deserved winners and whilst the point isn't the point the point is the poetry, they were worthy winners of Brave New Voices. 

[barpoetsbnv]

Dear Diary - Day 5 Part 1 (Hoodstock)

So Saturday was the final part of Brave New Voices (at least it was for us peasants). So with the finale in the evening the morning was clearly all about Hoodstock. From what i was able to gather, Hoodstock is an annual event that takes place in Philadelphia regardless but one of the BNV alumni worked it so that BNV could be a part of it. So for the better part of the morning and the start of the Afternoon the BNV teams went and took part in Hoodstock which involved A BBQ, Gardening and helping out the community. Clearly what you'd expect for the last day of a poetry festival. Sarcasm aside, it was a really great festival to have and a great thing to do on the da of the final. It was a well needed break from the onslaught of poetry from the Quarters and Semi's (not that they were bad but hearing poetry from 9am till 10pm can take it out of you). 

Having an event like Hoodstock really drives through the point of this festival that it's about the community of poets, not just the competition. Whilst the competition is nice that's not the be all and end all. I mean Brave New Voices is only part of what Youth Speaks does after all. So was good to see everyone there sociailsing with the other teams. Even the finalists who surely had one eye on their performances that evening were out in attendances just enjoying the festival. 

They split the teams to go out and do various things like gardening, street clean up etc... which was great which also gave me a good chance to try and catch some poets and get some interviews done.

In summary, it was a nice way to start the final day, very relaxing, very friendly, but as nice as it all was and as much as it's about the community... we still were all looking forward to the final that was coming...

[barpoetsbnv]

Brave New Voices - Day 4 (Semi Finals)

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Dear Diary - Day 4 Part 2 (Semi Finals)

That evening it was the Semi Finals, and as mentioned the 16 highest scoring teams from the quarters made it through to perform in the semi's where they were split into 4 bouts of 4 teams, with the winner of each bout making it to the final. I made a point of watching a bout full of teams I hadn't seen that day so I watched the semi final featuring the teams from LA, Austin, Ashville and Flint Hill.

The judges, this time, would do scores straight after the poems which would be then given to the host of the night to read out from low to high so everyone could hear the scores which was a weird culture shock for me.

The Pine Ridge team opened up the Semi Final I was at, taking on sacrificial poet duties due to their individual poem (the one about the history of Native America) scoring so highly. 

With that quality poem up it was down to the semi finalists performing of which I'll go through them team by team. Flint Hill came in 4th in that bout but they put up a good showing. The quality of the semi final was high though so whilst Flint Hill were good, they weren't great or amazing in that Semi Final. This is mainly due to all the other teams really stepping it up and standing out though so no negatives to them.

Ashville came in 3rd despite having one of their group pieces making it to that mythical land of getting all 10's. Whilst they were great and performed some amazing group pieces (their piece that got all 10's showing that), they were unlucky to come up against two great teams in LA and Austin who were just that bit better on the night and more consistent throughout the bout. Nevertheless Ashville did amazingly and their all 10 poem did make it to the final as a sacrificial poem but I'll touch on that when I get onto day 5.

In 2nd place was Austin and it was a very close fought thing. Throughout the semi final I feel like Austin got the most 10's and it was seeming like they would be the ones making it all the way to the final. Their two stand out poems in my opinion being two poems about american culture and how accepting it is of other cultures and people from other nations. What made these even more powerful was the massive american flag in the background of all performances. For me, these poems were so well done and weren't attacks on America or any of that but instead questioning why things are like they are which works for me really well. As a team they were great and had some incredible poems and performances but at the end of the day, it was LA who came in first in this semi final. So yes, the LA team. I pretty much adopted them as my team to route for when I first saw them get on stage. They are all just so likeable for me, it was hard not to support them. They then backed it up with some incredible poems. One of which talking about the gun culture of LA which was so powerfully performed and perfectly utilised the group performance. No one voice stood out over the rest and they worked it so well together it was incredible to see. With that followed by their poem on rape culture which was again powerfully done they were delivering quality performance after quality performance. With a place in the final's on the line they saved their best for last with Get Lit (note: this link shows them performing Get Lit at the opening ceremony and not the Semi Final).  It was powerful during the opening ceremony and even more powerful during the semi's. But they weren't sure it's enough and after the performance it reduced one of their team members to tears as they waited to find out if they had made it through. Lucky for them, the judges loved them too and they made it through to the finals and deservedly so. Their joy was very clear to see but what was even better was seeing that the "losing" teams all just seemed to be happy to be a part of this whole event and making it this far. As said before and was shown again during the semi's, whilst LA, Denver, Washington and Cape Town had all won a place in the finals, that wasn't the point of this day of poems or this festival. The point isn't the points. The point well and truly is the poetry.

[barpoetsbnv]

Brave New Voices - Day 4 (Quarter Finals)

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Dear Diary - Day 4 Part 1 (Quarter Finals)

Well, this is what we came for, the actual Brave New Voices Slam. (Well technically we came for the whole festival but this is what the festival was gearing up to). The way Brave New Voices works (or at least worked this year round) was that there were 3 quarter final rounds during the day with teams competing during the day vs different teams from 9am in the morning. Once they'd got through all 3 quarter finals they'd add up the scores and select the 16 teams to make it through to the semi final. The semi finals would all be taking place at 7pm where they'd have 4 bouts going on at the same time. One team from each bout would go through and make it to the final. Hopefully that makes sense to you. What it means though is that it's essentially impossible to watch all the teams at least once as all these bouts are happening at the same time. Nevertheless you get a seriously giant amount of poetry coming at you in one day. I'll start by saying the quality of poems was really up there throughout the day, from the quarter finals onwards it was all just really impressive work being displayed. It also showed quite a lot about the culture that these people are living with and experiencing and how their life differs to what I'm used to hearing in poems. That was just topic-wise let alone stylistically. I've known of and seen Slam Poetry though mainly through YouTube videos than actually seeing it. Watching a whole day of it was a new experience for sure. It was all just very intense. 

To put it gently, there's a lot of passion on display (not that I'm not used to seeing passion but it really comes through in their slam poetry). It's a pretty intense affair I'll say again which was taking it's toll as the day went on. The break between the Quarter and Semi finals was very much a welcome one. Now before I go too far into that, let me actually talk about some of the poems and the teams I saw. 

I spent most of the quarter finals following the team from Pine Ridge. They were the first native american team to make it through to the quarter finals and that interested me so I made it to their bouts to see what they would bring to the slam. And whilst they're poetry was great, especially one of the team who had a poem about how history shows and documents Native Americans, the inexperience in their team did show a bit and they sadly didn't make it through to the quarter finals.

In following them, I saw the team from Denver in the first quarter final who would eventually make it all the way to the final. Whilst they were a good team they were up against some real quality in the first quarter final so they didn't stand out for me when I first saw them but they certainly brought out their A game for the final so credit to them. The second quarter final was quite a powerful one to be at and really showed the bravery of a lot of these poets with the subjects they were talking about. In that quarter final alone there were 3 poems about people's personal experiences with rape. They were all brave performances with all 3 of them resulting in the poet (or poets in Bermuda's case) crying during the performances. The love in the room was very clear during those poems and it was those moments when you remember that whilst it's a slam and you have to do the horrible thing of comparing multiple rape poems and giving them a score... that's not really the point of all of it. The point truly is the poetry and that certainly hit home during the week.

The final quarter final the Pine Ridge team weren't competing so I joined back up with Jacob and Katie and Lisa to watch our 3rd quarter final this time involving the South African team. 

They are truly an inspirational team. If for nothing else, just their journey to the slam and that they came without a coach and saved up all the money, had to go into their trust funds etc... just to make it all possible is truly remarkable. When you then add that to the quality of their poems then you have a truly inspirational team. Their lead poets poem was still my favourite of the whole festival, detailing her quite intense relationship with her Father. 

As a whole, the quarter finals were impressive to watch with stand outs for me being the South African team as a whole, Pine Ridge's poem about Native America's in history and Bermuda's duo poem about two girls personal experiences with rape.

At a later point I shall possibly go into more depth about the quarter finals and express more feelings towards the competing teams but for now I'll just say that it was a great day of poetry, which then led way to a great evening of the Semi Finals

[barpoetsbnv]

Brave New Voices - Day 3

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Dear Diary - Day 3 (Workshops + Queeriosity)

Apologies for the late upload, I got busy with the festival and with life and travelling in general but I hadn't forgotten about you so here's my entry for day 3. After a good breakfast with all 4 of us now (With Lisa arriving on the Wednesday night just in time for the ceremony) we had a day of the unknown ahead of us. We had a fabled day of workshops plus a night at Queeriosity. 

Before the workshops took place, Jacob introduced us fully to a few of the people at the event he knew including Martin Daws. Martin is the Young People's Poet Laureate for Wales and it was good seeing him there. He was actually able to get me onto the press team for Brave New Voices which meant I could film a lot more of the event and get a lot closer to the events and performers for better shots and what not.

But yes, the workshops themselves. I was lucky enough to get to Project Voice's workshop on how to run workshops. (Project Voice by the way are incredible and I've already linked to them on this blog).There were a lot of brilliant writing and performing workshops on run by many talented people but I was curious to see what they could teach about leading workshops as I've not really worked on that. I've led a couple but it's mainly been through just going and trying rather than actually working and crafting it. 

Whilst I wouldn't say I learnt anything new, it was very nice and helpful going over things I already knew and stressing about how important each of the techniques are and why they're used/why they use them etc...

It has to be said that whilst the workshop sides of things was very informative and great, despite the fact that they were open to the public the organisation was very performer heavy in terms of how it was being run. Which is fair enough considering how they are the focus of this festival but for something open for the performers it'd have been nice to have some more information. Alas, the workshops were really good and it seems like everyone who went to them learned a fair deal and enjoyed them. Which just left Queeriosity in the evening. The event was an open mic event for the performers with poems based around the idea of people's sexuality and how they're dealing with it, how it's perceived etc... As a theme for a night it was a great theme and was good to have that kind of structure running through the night. It was also sprinkled with featured poets throughout which was very good. It may have run on a little bit too long as by the end it was very welcoming for it all to be over but it was still a great night with some great poems on offer. A good way to prepare for the quarter and semi finals that'd be taking place the next day.

A credit to the poets who performed that whilst they were all on the same topic they did a pretty good job at all sounding different. With a set of great hosts and great poets it was just a really good night to have just before everything kicked off big time on the Friday.

[barpoetsbnv]

Dear Diary - Day 2 (Opening Ceremony)

This is why we came to Philly. This is literally why we came to Philly. Brave New Voices has officially begun! Our day started with a breakfast debriefing with Mr Jacob Sam-La Rose before me and Miss Katie Byford went on to explore Philadelphia. Our debrief was trying to take stock of what we're here for and what we want to try and get out of this whole festival so was good to think about with the opening ceremony not that far away. Touring the city was amazing. It was great to see what Philly was like and luckily the weather was on our side today with it being pure sun and pure heat throughout the day. It's an amazing city with far too many Starbucks, Dunken Donuts and subways but it's so big and great and we're just really enjoying being here. We managed to go from one side of Philly to the other, seeing the Delaware River as well as those famous Rocky Steps (totally instagrammed that).

With exploring Philly done for the day, all that was left was the Opening Ceremony and what an event that was. The opening ceremony was made up of established poets, friends of BNV and BNV alumni performing and what an amazing night it was. They even had the Mayor of Philly leave a meeting with President Obama to come here and perform a poem. If that doesn't show you how influential BNV is then I don't know what will. As for the rest of the performers they were simply amazing. From Project Voice (Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye) to Denice Frohman to First Wave they were all simply astounding. 

The poetry was awesome to hear as were the performances, but the best thing about this is the community here. The crowd (filled up with primarily the poets who will be performing in the slam) were all clearly up for this. They were very vocal to what they were hearing, they had their own chants and everything and my god it was just a fantastic environment to be in.

The really special thing was seeing the Alumni there and how involved they are in the event and planning and hosting it and all of that. We don't have anything close to that back home in the UK so to see the opportunities this community seems to make was a really special thing to see. I don't think I can adequately describe how great the night was. I've recorded most of the performances (despite having a camera with a terrible zoom) and even got a couple of interviews with some of the poets here so will be aiming to come out of BNV with a finished project of some kind. Aside from all that I'm just really excited to see what's next for BNV. I mean the opening ceremony was so good and we haven't seen any of the slam teams that are going to perform yet. Today is workshops which should be great so will try and get to know some of the teams before it all well and truly kicks off on Friday with the actual slam. I can't wait.

[barpoetsbnv]

Brave New Voices - Day 1

[barpoetsbnv]

Dear Diary - Day 1

It's 05:27 here and I'm finally getting round to talking about the goings on of yesterday and day 1 in Philly. Apologies if this gets too diary like for this entry, the following ones should hopefully be more BNV friendly with BNV starting tonight. After an early start in the morning assisted by my oh so wonderful mother, it was off to the airport to check in and do all that fun airport stuff before catching the 12:15 flight out here. That all went pretty well (the fun of being organised) and getting to and through Heathrow was easy. Yes I did set off the metal detector because of my Oyster card and had to get a full body scan but hey, that's something I can tick off my list of things to do now isn't it? The only issue getting to Philly was that the weather there (well here now) has been far from perfect with Thunder Storms on Monday night delaying flights, so I was on a half hour delay leaving Heathrow on a plane but no biggy. The flight itself was relatively enjoyable. I hadn't been on a plane for 7 years so I'd forgotten what it was like. So was very happy to see just how much there was in terms on in flight movies. My trip was spent watching The Lego Movie, Hairspray, The Mask, Glee, The Big Bang Theory and the first half of Need For Speed (not as terrible as I thought it'd be). I also befriended one of the flight attendants who decided not to charge me for a tub of pringles which is always a win.

With 8 hours of flying over the Atlantic Ocean done, it was touching down in Philly and an hour long trip through customs (oh joy of joys). It was only then, explaining to the customs official that I'm going to Philly and will be hanging with friends of which all 4 of us are travelling on different planes to watch some poetry competition that I realised how suspicious our story actually sounds. Anyway I made it through customs, found a shuttle to the hotel and then checked in at the wonderful Sonsesta Hotel.

The hotel looks lovely (though it also looks like they're only 90% through finishing it). And my room looks wonderful too (Pictures to follow soon). After an hour of settling in (aka setting up my wifi) I met up with my fellow poet Katie Byford who came to Philly the night before (expect something from here on this blog soon). With it being 7pm local time then, we went out to go and find some dinner and just look around, meaning we ended up in a nice local Pizza Place that has oversized slices (my favourites). We also took a fair few photo's and just generally started getting acquainted with the area. Our evening was spent in Katie's room (which is slightly bigger than mine damn her) where we watched the poetry documentary Louder Than A Bomb to get us into the slam poetry mood. Today... BRAVE NEW VOICES BEGINS. This gun be good...

[barpoetsbnv]

Dear Diary - Day 0

Right now, I believe everything is backed. All the forms are filled. All T's crossed and I's dotted. Money's been exchanged and all is in set up and ready. Tomorrow, I'm boarding a plane and going to Philadelphia for 5 days for this years Brave New Voices festival and slam and I am beyond excited. I currently have no idea as to what to expect from this festival. I've been guilty of not knowing much about the festival except from watching the odd few videos on YouTube from previous years performances there like the iconic "Thinking Of You" It's gonna be interesting to see what it's like when I'm there. There's not really an equivalent of it over here. There's been events like the Word Cup and Shake the dust which have been amazing but they've not been as open or big as this is and they're still not at an annual level or as well known as Brave New Voices. There's certainly a danger that I've hyped it up a lot in my head but from all the whispers I've been hearing in the poetry community my hype is understandable and shall be met when I get there. Though to be honest just going to America in of itself should be pretty great as I haven't had the pleasure to go there before. Add that to seeing another culture's take on poetry and then that's my hype being met. Anyway this is my first entry, and I'll try my best to keep up with this blog and keep posting my thoughts and feelings on the whole America, Philadelphia Brave New Voices experience. There may even be videos and Pictures coming through too...