The Spoken

Olivia Bergdahl

Olivia Bergdahl c_Helene Ringberg

Olivia Bergdahl (born in 1989 in Göteburg, Sweden) won the 2007 Swedish Poetry Slam Competition when she was just seventeen years old. The following year she reached 4th place in the Poetry Slam World Cup. She has since toured Sweden, Europe and the USA and has received many awards, including the Sveriges Radios Novellpris. She writes for Swedish radio and has published a novel and a volume of verse.

Publications (a selection):
Efter ekot (novel). Ordfront Förlag 2015
Demo (poems). Ordfront Förlag 2007

Bas Böttcher

Bas Böttcher c_gezett

Bas Böttcher (born in 1974 in Bremen) studied Media Design at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and is one of the founders of the German Spoken Word scene. In 1997 he won the first German Poetry Slam Championships. The “pioneer of pop-poetry” as he has been called has developed various formats for poetry – the electronic hypertext Looppool as a form of expression on the Internet, the textbox for live performances and the Poetry Clip. He has published several books of poems with the publisher Voland & Quist. His texts are in school textbooks and standard anthologies of German poetry such as Der Neue Conrady and Jahrbuch der Lyrik. In 2014 Böttcher edited Die Poetry-Slam-Fibel for Satyr Verlag, the most extensive collection of Poetry Slam pieces to date.

Publications (a selection)
Vorübergehende Schönheit. Voland & Quist2012
Neonomade. Voland & Quist2009
Dies ist kein Konzert. Voland & Quist 2006

DGIZ

DGIZ (born in 1972 in Rennes, France) mixes Rap, Slam Poetry, music, comedy and improvisation. As the “poet of the modern world, spokesman of the city and dreamer of language” (Mouvement.net) he has been performing on French stages since 2004. In 2012 he gave his first concerts as an MC. His hip-hop is nonconformist, makes fun of itself, is honest and intelligent. Himself a double bass player, DGIZ has no fear of integrating acoustic instruments into his songs. In this way jazz sounds merge with hip-hop and Spoken Word on his albums and fuse to become urban poetry.

Publications (a selection):
dgiz hors. junkadelik zikmu 2003

Dominique Macri

Dominique Macri (born in 1981 in Marburg) is a Slam poet, actor and presenter with a degree in psychology. She has been active in the improvisation theatre group ‘fast forward’ since 2003. She complements her repertoire with solo gigs, including for the Frankfurt Museum of Modern Art and the Stuttgart State Gallery. She has worked as a director for many theatre and performance projects and was awarded the Soziokultur innovation prize in 2015. She has been performing as a Slam poet all over Europe since 2007. She presents Poetry Slams, festivals, congresses, galas and panel discussions, including the award of the amarena German Amateur Theatre Prize from 2014-2016 and many events for the Hessen Ministry for Education, Science and Art.
Since 2013 Macri has been working freelance for the European ThesSLAMoniki project as a Poetry Slam, Creative Writing and performance in the Stuttgart Kulturkabinett. In 2014 she and her team partner Dalibor as Team Scheller won the international German-language Poetry Slam Championships in Dresden; in 2015 they were vice-champions and Best German Team. Since 2016 Dominique Macri has been working freelance as a consultant for Maiconsulting in Heidelberg and since 2017 she has been working as a trainer for the Goethe Institute in Qatar.

Dalibor Markovic

Dalibor Markovic c_Ken Yamamoto

Dalibor Markovic (born in 1975 in Frankfurt am Main) began his career with Rap and Hip Hop, followed later by Beatboxing and Spoken Word. For the past fifteen years he has been appearing on stages in Germany and around the world as a one-man theatre and ‘verse designer’. Poetry combines with Beatboxing in the search for the connection between identity and language. Linguistic agility, contrasts and speed are the hallmark of his texts. He has published two books and a USB stick. In 2014, Markovic was German language Poetry Slam Champion.
Dalibor Markovic is a member of two poet ensembles, Team Scheller with Dominique Macri and Boombastic Lyrikwunderland with Bas Böttcher and Nora Gomringer.

Publications (a selection):
Und Sie schreiben auf Deutsch? Voland & Quist, Dresden 2016
Bühnenstücke, Band 1. Gedichte. Warrington Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2011
Bühnenstick: 1. Gedichte auf einem USB-Stick. Warrington Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2011
Schulwege. poems. Warrington Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006

Lello Voce

Lello Voce c_Francesco Francaviglia

Lello Voce (born in 1957 in Naples, Italy) is one of the pioneers of European Spoken Word and introduced Spoken Music into the Italian Poetry Slam scene. He was the first author to bring out poetry comics, a genre that earned him the 2012 Napoli Prize. His texts have been translated into English, French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Arabic. Voce has published various books of poems and albums in collaboration with such artists as Frank Nemola and A. Salis. Together with Nanni Balestrini and Paolo Fabbri he started the television show L’ombelico del mondo (Rai EDU). He is a founder member of the Word Poetry Movement of the Festival de Poesía de Medellín.

www.lellovoce.it

Publications (a selection):
Il fiore inverso. Squilibri editore 2016
Il Cristo elettrico. No reply 2006
Piccola cucina cannibale (with F. Nemola and C. Calia).Squi[libri] 2011
L’esercizio della lingua. Le Lettere 2010
Farfalle da combattimento. Bompiani 1999