Sven Stears - Canterbury's Slam Poetry Champion
A chat with slam champion and Kent’s all-round poetry pusher Sven Stears offers a vision of the future
In the blue corner, wearing the blue trunks, representing Kent and England… Sven Stears!
OK, so slam poetry isn’t quite like that, but it does see the best linguistic performers go head to head in front of the judges and the crowd in an attempt to be the best. It is also true that Kent is home to the current English Grand Slam Champion, Sven Stears, who is one of the country’s foremost slam and performance poets.
Earlier this year, Sven represented England at the World Cup of Slam 2024 in Paris and, while he didn’t take home the title, the experience was a great opportunity for Sven to network and continue his plans to help promote and push poetry as far as he can.
“Actually, not having the pressure of the next rounds to perform in enabled me to unwind and be more genuine around the other competitors and sort of have bigger, more important conversations,” says Sven. “Canterbury is twinned with Reims in France and I had a conversation with the person who organises all of the slam competitions there. They are really keen to do stuff with us, as are a lot of the international community.
“They have been doing slam poetry in Reims for 20 years and this year they’re going to be celebrating that. And they want six UK poets to go over there and take part.”
Sven has an MA in creative writing from the University of Kent, where he wrote his dissertation critiquing a decade of participating in slam culture in the UK.
He has toured the UK and Europe, headlining and winning slams across the continent, while also running workshops in numerous schools and universities, including Canterbury Christ Church.
As a recording artist, his work has received airtime on national radio stations, while he has also released albums of his poems, which touch on themes of personal loss, societal trauma, mental health and addiction but always with little messages of hope.
But it is arguably the slams that draw an audience. The competition element makes them intriguing to those freshly discovering the art form, with poets having three minutes to recite their own work to be judged either by the audience or a panel of experts.
It’s a concept that has been going for more than 40 years, with its roots an international mesh of punk, spoken word and cabaret performance. But, as with all art forms, evolution is inevitable and Sven is already under way with plans to place Kent at the forefront of the poetry vanguard.
Firstly, there are discussions to introduce a County Poet scheme with the county council to bring the best Kent poets to the fore and get them working with international spoken-word artists - akin to his work with Reims.
“The idea behind that would be to really generate new talent, improve the talent that we have here by bringing outside influences in, then to showcase that talent on a national and international stage,” says Sven.
Dropping on to Sven’s YouTube channel INKBOMB, you will see numerous short films of poetry put to creative video - something Sven has helped other poets with - and that he firmly believes will help bring attention to up-and-coming poets.
“As someone whose art is primarily performance-based, I find that when you’re not on stage you’re a bit dead - in the eyes of the public, you cease to exist,” says Sven.
“You can have a book out and that kind of increases your longevity, but unless you’ve seen me you might fail to read it in my voice in the truest possible sense. And that’s why there are a million different interpretations of things like Shakespeare, because the voice is long gone.
“Now, there was a guy in the 70s who came up with a term ‘video poetry’ and he said that adding video to poetry would only ever stand to lift the words of the poetry themselves. We live in a world now where everyone’s got a video-editing suite and camera in their pocket all the time. You have kids nowadays who are able to edit videos and write poetry to a really high degree.”
Sven is looking to create a Video Poetry Slam in 2024, which would see poems put to film. But it would also allow for two things - firstly, people to compete internationally with ease, but also to level the playing field for those perhaps unable to compete at live in-person events.
“My eyes were opened to how ableist things like in-person competitions can be, completely by accident,” says Sven. “There’s a poet who I won’t name, a famous former UK slam champion, who is quite heavily chronically ill. So they really struggled with getting to events to show face, to enter competitions.
“When Covid happened, in terms of performance, it became a bit of a leveller because all the slams that used to be in-person went online via Zoom and via Teams. So people who were less able to go started to take part again.”
POETRY AROUND THE COUNTY
Kent Poetry CIC - Run by Nina Telegina and Connor Sansby
Sugar Rush in Margate - Run by Heidi Moran and Genevieve Pepper
Mixmatched - Neurodivergent arts organisation
Big Trouble - A poetry night in Rochester
Holy Moly - Gravesend-based poetry open-mic night
