Youth Poetry Festival final tomorrow

THE top eight secondary school spoken word teams will face off in final round of National Secondary School Spoken Word Intercol.

The Raise The Bar championship takes place tomorrow with top youth performance poetry on display for spoken word enthusiasts and anyone interested in the plight and might of the nation’s young voices.

Facing off at the Central Bank auditorium will be Arima North Secondary, Bishop’s Tobago, Holy Faith Convent (Couva), South East Port of Spain and St Joseph’s Convent (San Fernando). They will come up against two schools to be named in a wild card run, plus defending champions St George’s College of Barataria.

The 2018 competition was launched with an Exhibition Slam on September 30 with the aim of raising the bar for would-be competitors by exposing them to highest quality of local performance poetry delivered by established, prize-winning spoken word poets.

Following the Slam, poets of the 2 Cents Movement ran a special nationwide students workshop series to help prepare school teams for their respective competitions that ultimately determined their place in the finals.

As with the other stages of competition, the teams will compete in three rounds: individual, group and a one-minute lightning round. In keeping with 2 Cents’ mission to promote advocacy through art, the group round is based on the theme of gender-based violence (GBV), a major focal point of the NGO’s work over the past two years.

Up for grabs are trophies and cash prizes: $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000 for the top three teams and dedicated writing and performance mentorship.

Doors open at 3.15 pm and there will be a pop-up market just outside the auditorium. Showtime is 4 pm.

Raise The Bar is a joint initiative of the Bocas Lit Fest and the 2 Cents Movement, sponsored by the National Gas Company with the support of the British High Commission. It is also the outcome of both organisations’ ongoing secondary school engagement through the Bocas Lit Fest school tour project that started in 2013.