Abíọ́dún ‘Abbey’ Abdul is a Yorùbá-Nigerian English Language Lecturer and writer of poems, essays and memoir-polemics reflecting on social issues encompassing her schooling across three continents. She won various poetry awards throughout childhood and her work focusing on social justice and celebrating our common humanity has been published in anthologies.

Exonian by birth, internationally-published poet and spoken word artist Clare Morris is the 2022 Exeter Poetry Slam Champion. She appears regularly at local poetry nights and is a keen supporter of poetry events all across the South West. Devon Maid Walking explores the story of an Exeter legend through the centuries, blending Old, Middle, and modern English. Exonian by birth, internationally-published poet and spoken word artist Clare Morris is the 2022 Exeter Poetry Slam Champion. She appears regularly at local poetry nights and is a keen supporter of poetry events all across the South West. Devon Maid Walking explores the story of an Exeter legend through the centuries, blending Old, Middle, and modern English.

Henry Morray is the son of Sierra Leonean parents. He was born in Maryland and raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Henry is a senior at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, majoring in Product Development and Marketing and is honored to be the President of his campus’ Spoken Word Poetry Club: Lyrically Inclined.

Outi Pollari is a translator and music pedagogue from Kuhmo. She specialises in translating documents, yet she has translated some music-related belletristic works, too. She is used to be on stage as a singer, but slam poetry is very new to her. She’s excited to bring her poetry out of the desk drawers and jump into this new adventure.

English Translation:

Cultivation of Soul                                                                                                 0:01:00-03:29:00

I’m ploughing up deep furrows                                                                             00:04:29-00:07:18

forking over soil and dirt, digging out heavy chunks.                                           0:07:18-0:14:00

Still, the gaps between my thoughts remain there like hollow hunks…                00:14.00-00:18:00

I’ll create extensive text fields!                                                                              00:20:00-0:23:00

Could I plant anything in them?                                                                             00:23:05-0:27:00

Winter has come!                                                                                                    00:27:00-0:29:00

Just think of it, if the seeds of words germinated even under frost?                       00:29:03-0:35:00

I took a risk by inviting you to follow the strips of my words,                               00:39:00-0:45.02

dating back to days when the seeds that I carefully sowed on paper did sprout,    00:45:05-0:54:00

but eventually, the only yield of the crops on the bottom of my crib was chaff:    00:54:00-00:58:02

– all these hesitations, quests, and timid steps.                                                       00:58:06-1:05.02

That’s how the life is – fiddly and intractable…                                                     1:07:02-1:10:00

when my thoughts, assumptions, and expectations                                                  1:10:02-1:15:00

skid astray to chafe the edging kerbs of my path,                                                     1:15:00-1:22:00

causing friction

and making me forget that no collateral was ever granted,                                       1:22:00-1:29:00

to guarantee that I am SLOWLY heading to the direction that I am supposed to.    1:29:05-1:37:20

When I find it hard to make out the line between me and the ones around me,       1:39:00-1:45:00

it becomes crucial to start learning                                                                            1:45:05-1:50:10

to figure out my UNIQUE ways to catch and keep the ball of my own life rolling:  1:50:11-1:55:00

to truly grasp what is best right now.                                                                          1:55:03-1:59:00

If I fail, the soul starts to wail…                                                                                  2:00:00-2:06:05

An aching soul is disconcertingly noisy,                                                                      2:09:02-2:12:00

it yells out its pain, keeps harping on, explaining, lamenting,                                       2:12:05-2:20:00

pouring out on paper its infectious secretions.                                                             2:20:05-2:24:07

A serene soul enjoys well-balanced metabolism,

you don’t hear it rumbling and growling with hunger.                                                 2:26:07-2:35:00

The breathing rolls in gentle heaves                                                                               2:35:00-2:38:05

as the well-being soul hums softly.                                                                                       2:38:05-2:42:15

Where does the soul’s foul enemy keep guard?                                                            2:43:15-2:47:15

The one that keeps tearing up and ruining our lives?                                         2:47:15-2:51:10

– It hides squatting in the centre of everybody’s heart,                                                  2:53:00-2:57:05

and each one must tame it with one’s own hands!                                                        2:58:00-3:05:00

Matic Ačko (born in Maribor, 1991) is a designer, musician, poet and performer who first encountered slam poetry in 2017. He acts as the leader of the slam group Slam zverine (Slam beasts), which organizes monthly poetry slam evenings in Maribor (in cooperation with the Youth Cultural Center Maribor). In addition to poetry, he occasionally writes short prose and lyrics for musical compositions. He performed three times at the singer-songwriter’s festival Kantovanje with his original compositions. He is a multiple winner of local slam events and a winner of the national championship of Slovenia in 2021. He was also successful at this year’s Maribor selection for the Slovenian poetry slam championship, which was held at the end of October 2022 in Kranj. In 2021 he attended the European slam poetry championship in Brussels, where he successfully qualified for the world championship as the first Slovenian participant.

Carson Wolfe is a Mancunian poet. They are an Aurora Prize Winner and a category winner in the Button video contest 2021. Their poems have appeared with Fourteen Poems, The Penn Review, and Hobart, and are forthcoming with Rattle. They currently serve as a teaching assistant to Megan Falley on her renowned writing workshop Poems That Don’t Suck.

Abíọ́dún ‘Abbey’ Abdul is a Yorùbá-Nigerian English Language Lecturer and writer of poems, essays and memoir-polemics reflecting on social issues encompassing her schooling across three continents. She won various poetry awards throughout childhood and her work focusing on social justice and celebrating our common humanity has been published in anthologies.

Aurélie Leclerc est une artiste nomade qui se réinvente au fil de ses aventures et qui continue de faire évoluer son art en marchant vers de nouvelles destinations. Elle a débuté son pèlerinage en s’intéressant au théâtre, puis à la musique pop pour se tourner ensuite vers la poésie et le slam.

Aurélie Leclerc is a nomadic artist who reinvents herself through her adventures and continues to evolve by seeking new destinations. She began her pilgrimage with theater, then pop music, before embracing poetry and slam.

Translated piece:

Our tickers pitter and patter but we gotta take the mic for you

Poison people and politics always on the hunt for you

I’m a captive and a hostage too, I feel all the feels

Dear Planet, please forgive our poison pipelines and our feet in your fields

You gave us all you got and then you gave us even more,

Flourishing forests, animals, vegetables, minerals galore

But now it’s no big deal to smother you, torture you, treat you like trash

We don’t even pretend to care about you, all that matters is cash

And it goes it on and on and it never slows down

In this sea of destruction we just leave you to drown

And even though we know that you’re on your last breath

Skeptics of disaster still wanna race you to the death

Our tickers pitter and patter but we gotta take the mic for you

Poison people and politics always on the hunt for you

I’m a captive and a hostage too, I feel all the feels

Dear Planet, please forgive our poison pipelines and our feet in your fields

Yeah, we can hear those sirens blaring their warning

Through the bedlam, the carnage, the death and the mourning

Through the flooding, the storming, the sickness, disease

When it comes to cash we just can’t be appeased

And yet somehow you believe that the sun will still rise

And yet sometimes you can even see the tears in my eyes

And soon you will see we care just about ourselves

History for humans is just about themselves

With no water to drink we’ll have to forget evolution

Oceans filling up with organic fair trade pollution

Better quench the thirst of those thousands of beef cattle

Money talks, money rules, money wins the money battle

Might have to replace our JE ME SOUVIENS licence plate

Saying we remember don’t mean nothin’ when it’s far too late

Might have to replace it with DO SOMETHING AND DO IT FAST

If we don’t save the Earth from bleeding out, she ain’t gonna last

When people ask me if I wanna have kids

I say sure I do but not on a planet on the skids

With air getting hotter and oceans overflowing

My eco-anxiety is just growing and growing and growing

So Planet Earth, I get it, go crazy, fuck it, go off

I get it, we get it, things have been pretty rough

We know you’re the victim and the fault is all ours

But don’t forget that me I won’t stop fighting the power

Our tickers pitter and patter but we gotta take the mic for you

So people and politics will start lookin’ out for you

I’m a captive and a hostage too, I feel all the feels

For real, it’s a dead end for us and a dead end for us you too

Dear Planet, please forgive our poison pipelines and our feet in your fields

__________________

* Translator: Simon Brown

Päiv Jürgen Dengo studies folklore and works with storytelling and wordplay to create new worlds. In this text, the world is built around the play with the word “muu” which in Estonian means the “moo” of a cow and also “other”.

Päiv Dengo is the winner of TarSlämm – Tartu Poetry Slam 2022.

Vilnius-born, Augustė Jasiulytė earned a Bachelor’s degree in Scandinavian studies. First novel Šokanti giria published in 2019. In 2021 her play Mėžinys won 3^rd place at the Alytus Theater Playwright’s competition. Short stories featured in reviews (Metai, Literatūra ir menas, etc.), some translated to French.