Tales from a proud father

Ever heard of Slam Poetry? I hadn't, until my son Rowan took it up and started entering Slam Poetry competitions. It is performance poetry - where the poet stands up in front of a crowd and, in competition with other poets, delivers his stuff as he thinks fit. He may be wry, ironic, triumphant, sly, witty, funny, anarchic - whatever mood is right. He is judged for his delivery, content, style, and audience reaction. It makes for exhilarating entertainment and I am hooked.

Rowan has been performing in odd places for a while, and won a national championship last year. There are several of them, however, and we could never quite get a hook on how he was doing. But this year he entered for the new Radio 4 Slam Poetry competition and got through to the semi-finals in London a month or so ago. The family piled in to see it all and were caught up in the atmosphere. Young poets, old poets, housewives, mothers, rebels, students - they all gave their best in front of an audience that wanted them all to win. Rowan slipped through to the finals with a performance of his satire on Little Englanders and another one about Politicians.

Last Saturday the Finals were held in Bristol, three finalists from the North and three from the South. Sara Davies of the BBC held it all together with consummate skill and a delightfully easy way with the audience. We worked ourselves up into open-hearted enthusiasm for them all, willing them to do their best. The scoring seemed slightly chaotic but worked fairly enough. Three poets were eliminated, unfairly - it felt to us. One told a symbolic story of the Central Line. Another amused us with statistics about ourselves, and another spoke in Pam Ayres tones of a dreadful holiday. The three who emerged into the light for the last fling were Rowan, with musings on bewilderment after a friend's death, and two Northerners, both accomplished and slightly older. The man scored 28, the woman 28.4 and Rowan 28.5.

Hear it on radio 4 at 11.00pm this Thursday 13th. You, too, may be hooked.