Friday, May 30th and Saturday, May 31st The Chewstick Foundation invites the community to experience its 1st Annual Break The Chains Poetry Spokenword Festival Weekend. Starting on Friday with an all-out poetry SLAM battle featuring Bermuda’s most seasoned and most talented poets and Saturday culminating with the finale event, the Break The Chains Teen Poetry Competition, which invites young people from across the island to earn the chance to represent Bermuda internationally on the 2014 Brave New Voices Poetry & Spoken Word Festival taking place in Philadelphia. This weekend of events will mark the 2014 finale of Break The Chains, a creative writing and performance program using spoken word and poetry to develop literacy, confidence, identity, creativity and collaborative skills.

The program is offered to local students ages 14-19 at the following schools; The Berkeley Institute, The Bermuda High School for Girls, Cedarbridge Academy, Warwick Academy, Saltus Grammar School, Somersfield Academy and Mount Saint Agnes Academy. Each school has developed its own Poetry & Spokenword Club that has been working on campus to develop individual competitors to represent their school at the first annual Break The Chains Youth Poetry & Spokenword Competition.The Break The Chains Finale will be just the beginning of a life-changing experience for successful competitors. The evening will start at 7pm with judges chosen from representative sectors of the literary community for a night that is sure to see thoughtful impassioned performance and delivery.

To complement the schools competition adult poets are also invited to compete during the Break The Chains Poetry & Spokenword Festival. Poets from the age of 18 and beyond are invited to test their skills against some of the top poets in Bermuda for bragging rights as Bermuda’s Best Poet. Friday, May 30th will see community poets from across the island and within the Break The Chains program engage in a metaphorical fight to the death in a battle of words straight from the heart. It is not to be missed as The Chewstick Foundation anticipates that poets from across the island will register to compete. It’ll kick off at 9pm with the premiere of the ChewSLAM 20 minute documentary.There will be the chance to meet and ask questions of young people who’ve attended the Brave New Voices Festival in the past and to get an understanding of the Break The Chains Program structure, ethos and ways you can get involved.

Registration for the Friday Adult  SLAM and Saturday Youth Competition will be open from now until May 23rd online or via collection of forms from The Chewstick Foundation Headquarters. All proceeds raised over the weekend will go to registration and travel expenses for Bermuda’s First National Poetry & Spoken Word Team to compete overseas this Summer. For more information visit www.chewstick.org, call 292 2439 or email info@chewstick.org.