Te Aratai College students compete at the inaugural WORD: The Front Line Ōtautahi.

On Tuesday the 22nd of August, a group of four students from across year levels represented our school at Word: The Front Line Ōtautahi, a spoken word poetry slam that has been held in Auckland for the past 10 years, and has now been brought to Christchurch for the very first time.

Held at The Piano, the night was full of amazing performers from 5 different schools.

Our team, made up of Isabel Marshall-Ma, Adrian Singh, Georgia Kieboom, and Joseph Lomani, had been practising for a short 3 weeks, attending workshops during the weekends and staying after school to make sure the poems were interesting, catchy, and most importantly felt.

Coached by the extremely talented spoken word poet Dietrich Soakai, Te Aratai’s team did exceptionally well on stage. Isabel and Adrian’s poem “Chaotic Rain Thing” made the audience laugh and was full of vivid imagery and creative ideas. Georgia had the audience spellbound with her beautiful metaphors and heartfelt performance of her poem “Stars”. Joseph had probably the most audience participation of the entire night, making the entire room click and stomp on beat with his incredible poem “My family is like palusami."

Unfortunately, it was Christchurch Girls High that ultimately won, but we were still a part of history as competitors in the first-ever Christchurch-based slam.

The event is annual and Ms Singh will be running a weekly spoken word club throughout the year, so if you like to write, perform, or just want to do some confidence building, consider joining the team. We are looking forward to creating more poetry and spoken word in 2024 - watch this space!