Poetry News

Poets Akegama Arok and Shalom Tiatia win top prize

Congratulations to the team of two, Akegma Arok and Shalom Tiatia, who won the OutLoud Grand Final, ECO!SLAM 2018 at the Melbourne Writers Festival. OutLoud is a spoken word high-school poetry slam competition created by Australian Poetry in partnership with Red Room Poetry and Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria.

As part of their prize for winning against 18 other participating schools, Akegma and Shalom will receive a paid performance at the State finals of the National Poetry Slam at the State Library of Victoria, a radio interview and a professional workshop with a leading internationally acclaimed hip hop artist and poet. They also receive individual subscriptions to Australian Poetry (publishers of Australian Poetry Journal and Australian Poets Anthology) and Express Media (publishers of Voiceworks, Australia’s premier youth literary journal, publishing poetry, fiction, articles, comics and visual artwork by people under 25).

Check out their award winning piece here:

Our poets certainly haven't gone unnoticed and have made an appearance on the Red Room blog: https://redroomcompany.org/blog/red-room/victorias-fiercest-young-poets-battled-outloud-ecoslam-2018/ 

If you would like to watch Akegma and Shalom perform their piece, Dear Society, at the State Finals, seats can be booked for free here: https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/whats-on/poetry-slam