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Dramatic Win for National Poetry Slam Champion

Canberra's Omar Musa won the 2008 Australian Poetry Slam in a dramatic 'slam off' last week, scoring $5,000 plus a gig at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival next year.

A sold out crowd watched the National Grand Final at the Sydney Opera House on Thursday 4 December.

After calculating the scores of the 18 competing state and territory finalists, a 'slam off' was needed to separate ACT's Omar Musa from Perth's Mark Lloyd.

The 23-year-old hip-hop artist, Omar Musa, emerged as the winner after performing a powerful slam poem about an imaginary conversation with his first born child.

'I'm over the moon. Events like this contemporary poetry competition revitalise a love for the English language and literacy and make poetry more accessible, especially for younger people, by mixing the slam approach and hip-hop,' Omar said.

Competition judges were chosen from the audience and national finalists had just two minutes to impress with their original spoken word, poetry, hip-hop, monologues and stories.

This year more than 600 emerging spoken word artists competed in 40 Poetry Slam heats held in regional areas and city centres in every state and territory.

The competition was co-ordinated via state and public libraries, with professional spoken word artists hosting the heats and running workshops in schools, libraries, pubs and theatre spaces. The State Library of Victoria staged the Victorian heat in November.

For the first time ABC Local Radio broadcast and streamed all state finals, plus the National Grand Final. More people were able to participate than ever before, including the online community.