On July 24th, I boarded a coach with a few poets on my way to my first festival, Nozstock: The Hidden Valley where I would be competing in that years Nozslam.  We were there until Monday morning and my god, what a beautiful and amazing 4 days they were.

Firstly, it was brilliant to be around that group of people. With Rikki Livermore and Matt Cummins essentially acting as our lovely leaders, we also had a magnificent set of feature poets with us in the form of Joel Auterson, Katie Bonna, El Crisis, Sara Hirsch and Caroline Teague. Add that with the fellow slammers of Jack MacMillan and Daisy Thurston Gent and it just meant I was surrounded by great people, great friends and great poets which is a magnificent environment to be in.

We spent a lot of the time performing, with the Friday spent performing under a canopy gathering people who wanted to get out of the rain but then fell in love with our words. Saturday had us take over the comedy tent for a good two and a bit hours before Sunday was the day of the actual slam itself and 3 hours of beautiful poetry.

I could talk about these four days for hours, but I’ll keep it short and sweet. It was a fantastic four days, I learnt a lot, I experienced a lot, it was amazing and inspiring and I’d want to do it all over again. I still have glitter on me, I don’t think I’ll ever get the mud of some of my clothes but I have to say that was one of the best experiences of my life.

Below are the videos of me performing in the slam:

Tyrone Lewis – I Am Groot (Nozslam ’15)

Tyrone Lewis – My Dinner With Gary (Nozslam ’15)