5th time’s the charm! Der­ron Sandy has won his first Grand Slam ti­tle af­ter five ap­pear­ances in the fi­nals of the First Cit­i­zens Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam (FC­NPS). The event was broad­cast on Sun­day night, and the win­ner was re­vealed live on the TTT NOW Morn­ing show on Mon­day morn­ing.

As thou­sands tuned in to the tele­vised fi­nals, as well as the livestream on Face­book and YouTube, po­ets and view­ers alike salut­ed Sandy’s de­liv­ery of a piece en­ti­tled The Re­al War­lords, pay­ing trib­ute to ven­dors and ser­vice providers who found ways to earn a liv­ing dur­ing lock­down re­stric­tions.

Last year’s cham­pi­on Alexan­dra Stew­art, who made his­to­ry by be­ing the first po­et to win two years con­sec­u­tive­ly, hoped to per­form a hat-trick in 2021, but earned sec­ond place in this year’s Slam, with po­et Michael Lo­gie plac­ing third.

Sandy took home first place prize of $50,000, one of the high­est val­ue awards for Spo­ken Word artists in the world. The sec­ond place comes with a prize of $20,000 and the third place earns $10,000.

The three top-scor­ing po­ets ap­peared on Mon­day’s TTT NOW Morn­ing Show, where their places were of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced by Ja­son Julien, Group Deputy CEO, Busi­ness Gen­er­a­tion, at First Cit­i­zens, the long-stand­ing spon­sor of the Slam.

Julien, prais­ing the po­ets’ per­for­mances, said that the spo­ken word po­ets’ words tru­ly re­flect who we are, and em­pha­sised how ho­n­oured First Cit­i­zens is to con­tin­ue to give these tal­ent­ed voic­es a plat­form on which to be heard.

In a fit­ting close to the 2021 Na­tion­al Slam, themed Po­et­ry is Re­silience, Sandy claimed his first Grand Slam and ex­pressed im­mense grat­i­tude for his long-await­ed win, par­tic­u­lar­ly at this time plagued with un­cer­tain­ty. He shared his phi­los­o­phy about the Slam and his hope that spo­ken word con­tin­ues to de­vel­op by say­ing: “God will re­build the city from ru­ins.”

Sandy, a spo­ken word po­et and the artis­tic di­rec­tor of Cents Move­ment, start­ed per­form­ing po­et­ry in 2009 at UWE Speak when he went toe to toe with Muham­mad Muwak­il in a wit­ty par­o­dy to one of Muwak­il’s most pop­u­lar po­ems. His tal­ent was im­me­di­ate­ly recog­nised by then UWe Speak host Amil­car Sanatan. Sandy be­came a sta­ple at UWe Speak and grew his ca­reer from riv­et­ing per­for­mances

A full time per­former, he has been ex­tend­ing his art form in­to in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions and pro­vides cre­ative di­rec­tion (the­atre and film), ed­u­ca­tion­al prod­ucts, mas­ter class­es and per­for­mances.

He has more than a decade of ex­pe­ri­ence in work­shop cur­ric­u­la de­sign, coach­ing and eval­u­at­ing spo­ken word per­for­mances.

Den­nise Dem­ming, on be­half of her fel­low fi­nals’ judges—Marge Black­man, Paul Keens-Dou­glas, Kwame Weekes and Whit­ney Hus­bands—re­marked that all the 11 fi­nal­ists’ per­for­mances were of a high stan­dard.

Founder of the Bo­cas Lit Fest Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown con­grat­u­lat­ed all the po­ets, and Sandy in par­tic­u­lar for his win.

She added: “We are very pleased that First Cit­i­zens recog­nis­es the trans­for­ma­tive na­ture of this sort of self-ex­pres­sion and is com­mit­ted to it, and are very grate­ful to TTT for putting so much cre­ative ef­fort in­to pro­duc­ing a won­der­ful show that matched the po­et­ic tal­ent on stage.”

This is the ninth year of the Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam, man­aged by the Bo­cas Lit Fest, and spon­sored by First Cit­i­zens, and is the first year with broad­cast part­ner TTT. The 2021 Grand Slam can be viewed at www.bo­caslit­fest.com/youth/po­et­ry-slam/ and www.youtube.com/c/TT­TLiveOn­line

2021 First Cit­i­zens Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam Re­sults

Grand Slam Cham­pi­on

Der­ron Sandy

2nd – Alexan­dra Stew­art

3rd – Michael Lo­gie

4th – Ab­dul Ma­jeed Ab­dal Karim

5th – Ronal­do Mo­hammed

6th – Za­kiya Gill

7th – Ter­riq Be­taudi­er

8th – Ter­ryl Be­taudi­er

9th – Shiv­ana Shar­ma

10th – Re­nal­do Brig­gs

11th – Seth Sylvester