This year’s National Poetry Slam championship wrapped up in mid-August, featuring a gathering of over 300 poets & performers from 76 teams from around the globe, at over 100 events across eleven event venues in the Boston & Cambridge areas. Started in 1990, each annual National Poetry Slam championship tournament brings teams of four to five poets together in one city to compete for the national title after first vying for city or regional titles. Competitors perform original works for a panel of judges that awards scores from 1 to 10. Team members can perform separately or together. The teams that made it to the finals in Boston had already won their home city’s tournament.

According to the Huffington Post, fans of poetry slam, “value poets as intellectuals, as dramatic performers,” said Host City Director, Simone Beaubien, a poet himself & also a paramedic. “There are so many types of storytellers here with different styles of performing that you always see something new.”

 “If you think you’ve seen performance poetry, you still haven’t seen slam,” said Beaubien in a press release before the finals began. “If you think you’ve seen slam, you’ve never seen anything like the National Poetry Slam.”

This year’s winning team was Slam Nuba from Denver, Colorado. Featured in the photo are Slam Nuba teammates Dominique Ashaheed & Ayinde Russell.