Opening Speech: 2011 All-Ireland poetry Slam Final

Opening Speech (for the 2011 All-Ireland Slam Final)

Welcome in

To the 2011

All-Ireland

Poetry Slam Final

Finally making it’s way to the City,

Ladies and gentlemen, get ready!

Lift up your hands and drum like Shamans

If you like what you hear;

Use your heart, your tables and your ears

As your instruments...

The Cauldron if Poesy is simmering,

The Cauldron of Wisdom is tipped on it’s lips

Tonight,

We’ve invoked the ancient bardic spirit;

May it

inhabit all these walls like a spell,

Be it

so potent we only notice it’s reflection in the well,

May it

Lift up your hearts and minds,

Send blood cells

Sprinting after pulses

This is no place for the pulpit.

We understand that nobility is subjective;

So if you’re wearing a tie

Better loosen it,

And if you’re holding a pint

Better raise your glasses to it,

This event

Is underground prestigious

And underground’s where all the best most precious shit is

The Cauldron of Poesy simmers

As Ulster, Leinster, Connacht, Munster

2 by 2 enter the ring

Ding-ding

(3 minutes

No hooliganism, assume no position, defend no borders, we honour the craft, we merit the art)

They mark out of ten

(There’s three of them

So that’s potentially 30 points per round per po-et.)

Then again

we accept

That when 3 minutes passes

A half point is deducted

for every 10seconds

over the limit the poem lasts,

Sayeth the judges:

Eaman Craig – writer, actor, recording artist

Julieann Campbell – Derry Journal journalist and poet

Jason Lee Lovell – UUC Poetry Society founding member as well as poet, editor and all round upstanding Londoner

Give them judges the front and back of your hands!

We understand that no raconteur shall read from his arm,

or from his scroll, or from white foolscap,

Nor make music

with anything other than her voice, her words, her heart.

No raconteur

May be anything but the poem; all props left at home,

One crutch allowed alone

And that’s

The microphone!

One-by-one, the poets;

First eight, then four,

Then head-to-head;

One by one

Will step aside,

Unveil the path up the mountainside

And the one who survives the climb 3 times

Will surely be immortalised!

Will surely strip naked ‘midst the glory

By the Foyle side

And chant

The mantra of the All-Ireland Poetry Slam Champ

As the Christmas shoppers dander past,

Not one fuck will they give;

There is no nakedness

Just dizziness

at such exalted high standing.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Lift your glasses;

We’ll call role for the brave souls who’ll stand on this stage

Listening to the waves crashing,

To the rocks in the walls come alive like Titans

Who’ll take vertigo but still hurl words like boulders

Into the wind, off the cliff,

Straight in the faces of the Gods or just

Whisper them:

John Cummins, Karl Parkinson representing Leinster

Conor O’ Kane, Seamus Fox representing Ulster

Seamus Barr’O Suillebhan, Sarah Clancy representing Connacht

Fergus Costello and Mary O Mary O’Connell representing Munster

Onwards poetic soldiers!

May your words flow like wine and stain colours

on the flag of this most ancient of ancient arts.

Ding, ding, three minutes,

The Cauldron of Motion is stirring

The time is upon us,

I declare these proceedings

Begun.

(Abby Oliveira 2011)

(for some clearer reason as to why I bang on so much about cauldrons please see this link and consider the ancient Irish text therein by our main man Amirgen White Knee http://13thdruidofavalon.tripod.com/druidplanet/id29.html)