And they gave powerful, passionate performances that had the crowd clicking their fingers with heartfelt admiration.

First place and people’s choice went to Chalise van Wyngaardt, who finished school at Coffs Senior College in 2014 and moved to Melbourne, where she quickly began making a name for herself on the spoken word scene.

Her poems on Friday night (June 8) were riveting: beautifully crafted, wise beyond her years, tackling big themes – the warrior strength of those beset by mental illness, love that will not stay, violent death.

Bellingen’s Michele Balharry was runner-up in the Poetry Slam, but she almost didn’t enter this year, despite getting through to round three in 2017.

“I thought I would just leave it,” she says. “But it wouldn’t leave me alone.”

Michele has been writing poetry “quietly, privately” forever, but it was the encouragement she received from the poets’ group that meets monthly at Alternatives Bookshop that encouraged her first attempt at the Slam three years ago.

With a solid background in performance – dancing, singing, playback theatre – taking to the stage was not the issue.

“The stage is my safe space, in lots of ways,” Michele says. “But I just didn’t have the material. I did not have a poem that I wanted to share.”

Then she was provoked.

“Someone said something. I can’t remember exactly who it was. It just made me think – do you really know who I am? What do you see?”

Michele says the poem is also a message to herself.

“What am I doing? I’m 53, the kids have all left home. And as soon as I get upset that maybe someone else isn’t seeing me, it’s like, all right, so what am I not seeing in myself?

“So the poem started off that way. But then it became kind of a tribute to all the places I’ve lived, that had meaning for me. I’m always fascinated by where people come from and how the landscape informs us. How we’re shaped by where we’ve lived.”

Michele says she did feel nervous about delivering such a personal poem, especially when initially it was greeted by almost complete silence.

Then there was a groan when she said the line about the “mundane mediocrity of the marriage moulded wife in me”.

“I had absolutely no idea how that poem was being received. I thought the first part was moderately funny, in a self-deprecating kind of way. And there was no response.  It wasn’t until the clicking started that I could relax a bit.”

Later, in the toilet queue she was congratulated by a group of women in their 30s, one saying it had moved her to tears and another vehemently affirming that “older women really need to be seen!”

Michele had known going into the Poetry Slam that if she got to through to the third round she would be relying on a lighthearted lullaby about pirates that she’d created for her son Finn over a decade ago (he’s now 17), as she didn’t have anything else to present. 

Although it bucked convention for the third round of a Slam, she felt unabashed about sharing the simple joy and delight of a children’s poem.

“People love the poems they remember hearing at bedtime or that they read over and over to their own kids. Why should every poem at a Poetry Slam have to be weighty?”

To read and watch some of the poems, see https://tinyurl.com/BSlam18