Lyra is a brilliant poetry festival held in Bristol each year. As part of the festival there is a poetry slam. This is a poetry competition where poets battle it out to be crowned the Lyra Grand Slam winner! I was really pleased to make it through to the qualifying rounds this year, and via Zoom I performed a poem called ‘#NewProfilePic’…
At the qualifying rounds, each poet performs and is scored by a mix of scores from three judges (all professional poets) and votes from the audience. I was thrilled to make it through to the grand slam final! This was held at the iconic St Georges’ in Bristol, in front of hundreds of people watching both in person and via a livestream. It was an experience I’ll never forget – performing with so many other amazing poets on such a big stage! I chose to perform a poem that’s really important to me. It’s called ‘Little Jo’ and it’s me as an adult revisiting younger versions of myself, saying what I felt I might have needed to hear at those points in my life. You can hear it below. Check out www.lyrafest.com for more information about the festival.
