Poetry slam

That kid's dead.

Jonah Hill at the Slam Poetry event.

One of my favorite things ever.

But yeah, that's all I got.

So mom's a schemer who became a poet on Oz.

He was on the New York Poetry Slam team with me.

That was my friend.

And so we were all artists.

It's a long, convoluted story, but...

So how I got into, like, poetry slams and things was because it just really felt accessible to me because you can kind of...

You're making your own rhythm.

You're following sort of a set thing.

He just pasted it in from his phone or whatever.

I think this is like slam poetry.

You better be like, boom.

That

Anyway, here we go.

Here we go.

Slam Poetry, pipe edition.

Briar and fire.

Check it out here in the Poetry Cafe.

Tell me about this Nerd Slam.

This thing is something you created.

I've seen it on several stages.

You also got to see it on Comic-Con stuff too? Yeah.

So what is a Nerd Slam? We've heard about Slam in general.

Let's talk about that.

So I always preface this so that way I take credit for the one I created.

And I'm always, everything that I do is within the mindset of winning a championship or making the best feature set possible or whatever the end goal is instead of like setting these low incremental standards for myself.

Even in Poetry Slam, when I started getting good, I was like, I just want to make it to the last round of the Poetry Slam.

I don't want to win.

I just want to make it to the last round.

So once I left wrestling, oh, I needed to compete.

Everything that I do, I'm very competition driven.

Like, that's something that Poetry Slam has done for me that has pushed my pen more than just writing in a vacuum has.

I have, again, having a championship in mind.

Well, we had a bit of cricket poetry in the year that made me last hour from cricket writer and commentator Baret.

Poetry Month ambassador and we've got some bonus poetry for Poetry Month today because we are now joined by one of Red Room's youth ambassadors Arantza Garcia-Ferrand and Arantza was the national champion of the 2025 Australian Poetry Slam so welcome Arantza and congratulations.

Thank you, Julian.

I really appreciate it.

Same to

you.

And Aranta Garcia-Ferrand is the 2025 National Champion in the Australian Poetry Slam and one of Red Room Poetry's Youth Ambassadors.

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yeah

and then i started going to poetry slams and i was winning everything in new york because no one was funny yeah um and so the first so none of the poems were funny yeah because i had these like hard lines that would get these like applause uh whatever um and so then because i couldn't make a living as a comedian um i was with my ex and we both worked at a bookstore and we were miserable and one day i together yep we're miserable together and one and i was you know i was like such a cliche like white boy reading jack kerouac kind of like phase And I pulled her aside behind the business section.

We were probably by like rich dad, poor dad.

And I was like, technically, if we quit this job and we live out of our car, we will be making a living as artists.