{"id":943208,"date":"2026-10-27T22:08:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T22:08:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/943208\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T22:08:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T22:08:21","slug":"twelve-year-old-student-and-alice-springs-poet-win-at-2026-australian-poetry-slam-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/943208\/","title":{"rendered":"Twelve-year-old student and Alice Springs poet win at 2026 Australian Poetry Slam finals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two months ago, Blake Mackenzie’s year six teacher introduced his class to slam poetry.<\/p>\n

While it was the first time 12-year-old Mackenzie had encountered the art form, his teacher was impressed with the poem he produced.<\/p>\n

“[She] said, ‘Hey, this is really, really good \u2026 I think you should enter this in a competition,'” he tells ABC Arts.<\/p>\n

Mackenzie took her advice, advancing through his local heat in Newcastle and the NSW state final to make the Australian Poetry Slam national final, held at the Sydney Opera House.<\/p>\n

There, he performed I Love My Country, a poem about racism and inequality in Australia, and Dear ChatGPT, reflecting on the impact of AI on everyday life.<\/p>\n

Mackenzie’s performance saw him named\u202f2026 Youth Champion, an experience he likens to “a dream”.<\/p>\n

“I was so full of adrenaline, and my heart was beating so fast. It feels great even now, to be honest,” he says.<\/p>\n

“I still can’t believe it.”<\/p>\n

Central Australian poet Bivor, an environmental consultant who emigrated to Australia from Bangladesh three years ago, was named 2026 Adult Champion.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Bivor was encouraged to pursue slam poetry by the executive director of Red Dirt Poetry, Laurie May. (Supplied: Nicola Bailey)<\/p>\n

Bivor, who lives in Alice Springs, performed two poems: Ourselves, and Politics Is Doing You, a rousing plea for political literacy.<\/p>\n

“I feel like people need to know about politics,” he says.<\/p>\n

The pair will share a $20,000 prize package, which includes publishing opportunities and invitations to perform at writers’ festivals in Australia and overseas in their roles as 2026 Australian Poetry Slambassadors.<\/p>\n

What is slam poetry?<\/p>\n

Originating in Chicago in the 1980s, slam poetry can take any form, from a story to verse, as long as it’s performed on stage in a competition.<\/p>\n

“There’s actually no such thing as slam poetry \u2014 there’s no genre,” Words Travel CEO Miles Merrill, a Chicagoan who brought slam poetry to Australia when he moved here in the 90s, explains.<\/p>\n

“There’s nothing that distinguishes it other than it’s performed writing.”<\/p>\n

Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n

Poetry slam contestants have two minutes to perform their work, with points docked for exceeding the time limit.<\/p>\n

Judges, picked at random from the audience, hold up score cards rating each performance.<\/p>\n

“We have a very scientific system where we throw five chocolates into the audience,” Merrill says.<\/p>\n

“Whoever catches a chocolate gets a PhD in poetry for the night.”<\/p>\n

Every contestant competes in the first round, with the top five going through to the second.<\/p>\n

Points are awarded for literary flair, the quality of the performance and its emotional heft.<\/p>\n

Arantza Garc\u00eda Ferrand, the 2025 Australian Poetry Slam champion, says the best slam poetry blends good writing with strong performance elements.<\/p>\n

“The trap that sometimes people fall into is preferring one skill over the other,” she says.<\/p>\n

“This isn’t just a theatre monologue, but it’s also not just reciting poetry out loud. It needs to be a good mix of both to really engage your audience.”<\/p>\n

An art form for everyone<\/p>\n

Slam poetry is defined by its accessibility, allowing poets to bypass traditional gatekeepers like editors and publishers to reach an audience.<\/p>\n

“Anybody can get up on the mic,” Merrill says.<\/p>\n

“[As a result] there’s a lot of people from diverse communities representing themselves.”<\/p>\n

\"Arantza<\/p>\n

Arantza Garc\u00eda Ferrand has signed with Adelaide micro publisher Pink Shorts Press to write a memoir. (Supplied: Rory Biddell)<\/p>\n

Garc\u00eda Ferrand says poetry that is too highbrow can fail to land with the audience.<\/p>\n

“When you’re writing, you need to \u2026 make sure that the audience understands everything you’re saying and you’re not getting too complex with the word choices or the concepts.”<\/p>\n

Garc\u00eda Ferrand, whose family emigrated to Australia from Peru when she was two, explores themes of family, immigration and culture in her work.<\/p>\n

She also draws inspiration from everyday life.<\/p>\n

“I love taking, like, a small intimate moment that I experience and then expanding on that and seeing how I can reflect it on bigger world issues,” she says.<\/p>\n

At the 2025 national finals, she performed Nine Suitcases and a Pram, a poem recounting her family’s immigration story.<\/p>\n

Loading Instagram content<\/p>\n

“[It’s about] everything they packed in the nine suitcases they brought to Australia \u2014 but, because it’s a poem, getting a bit more metaphorical about what’s in the suitcases,” she says.<\/p>\n

Garc\u00eda Ferrand also speaks Spanish and has been experimenting with integrating the language into her poetry.<\/p>\n

“When I first began, I was scared to use it because to me it was like, who’s going to understand it in the audience?” she says.<\/p>\n

“After having spoken to a few other Spanish poets that do use it in their work, it was such a beautiful reflection to be like, no, actually, the audience doesn’t need to understand every word. And even if they don’t understand the words, they understand why I’m using them.”<\/p>\n

The power of words<\/p>\n

Garc\u00eda Ferrand says there is a thrill in baring your soul on stage.<\/p>\n

“Very few times in our lives do we get to have a space just for ourselves to be able to talk about something incredibly personal to us.<\/p>\n

“To do it in a room full of people watching can be incredibly electric.”<\/p>\n

The emotional responses poems can elicit from the crowd always surprise Merrill, who teaches a slam poetry course at NIDA.<\/p>\n

“We’re not using props or costumes or stage settings but still we’re getting tears and standing ovations for people who are just standing there with a microphone,” he says.<\/p>\n

“It reinforces this idea that authentic, vulnerable, direct human-to-human communication is one of the most powerful things we can have, particularly in this age of screens.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Miles Merrill congratulating Blake Mackenzie at the Australian Poetry Slam final at Sydney Opera House. (Supplied: Nicola Bailey)<\/p>\n

And what is Mackenzie’s advice to prospective slam poets?<\/p>\n

“Just be authentic; be you,” he says.<\/p>\n

“It’s not about the competition, it’s not about the points, it’s just about you expressing yourself and being passionate about the message you’re trying to share.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two months ago, Blake Mackenzie’s year six teacher introduced his class to slam poetry. While it was the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":943209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,510249,510254,510251,510250,134,510252,510255,510253,510247,510256,510248],"class_list":["post-943208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-poetry-slam","tag-australian-poetry-slam-champion","tag-bivor","tag-blake-mackenzie","tag-entertainment","tag-poetry-slam","tag-poetry-slam-finals","tag-poetry-slam-sydney","tag-slam-poetry","tag-slam-poetry-winners","tag-what-is-slam-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}