Guess what, it’s youth week! And to kick off the event, the Calgary public library played host for Snap Judgement, a story slam competition concluding the 9th annual Calgary Spoken Word Festival. The event was last Sunday (April 22) at the downtown public 
library, and what a way to start Youth Week!
The CSWF is a series of events organized by the Calgary Spoken Word Society, which aims to develop a forum for the spreading and advocacy of spoken word poetry through performance and education. And you might be wondering, what is a slam? A poetry slam is a competitive event in which poets perform their work and are judged by members of the audience based on the poets’ content and performance. Pretty cool right?
But enough of that, time to talk about the speakers! There were five competitors vying for the illustrious, grand prize of $25. Phil Dack, Jilliane Yawney, Sebastian Wen, Karen Donald, and Telmo de Santos. Each of them had extremely unique, diverse speaking styles and each presented interesting, and captivating stories and poems. The story tellers were charismatic, passionate, relaxed, and inspired the enchanted audience with their sincere and riveting life stories. The poets were especially amazing: the way they spoke added profound meaning to what they were saying, every pause and every word were carefully crafted, well at the same time, expressing truly reflective poetry.
But, instead of me just talking about the orators, why don’t you listen to them yourself? Luckily, I managed to film the speeches which are available below (I hope you enjoy, as well, some speeches contain swearing, view with discretion!):
Paul Dack:
Jilliane Yawney:
Sebastien Wen:
Karen Donald:
Enjoy!