Ottawa Tonite.com : Section Title

“Ottawa is a poetry town.”

VERSeFest is bringing O-Town’s wide-ranging poetry communities together with a festival full of readings, performances, slam, spoken word, workshops for kids, discussions and much, much more. If you want it, and it’s connected to poetry, then VERSeFest has it. And they also have some big plans for the future.

Running at the Arts Court (2 Daly Avenue) from Tuesday, March 8^th until Sunday, March 11^th (with pre-festival shows starting today and tomorrow, March 5^th and 6^th), VERSeFest has 20 events, each sponsored by one of the 14 groups that make up VERSe Ottawa.

The festival kicks off at 7 pm, Tuesday, March 8^th with World Slam Champion Ian Keteku, David McGimpsey, Brad Morden, and recent Ottawa Book Award (English) winner Craig Poile.

“Ottawa is a poetry town,” says organizer Rod Pederson. “We put the numbers together and realized that somewhere between 600 to 1000 people attend poetry events here every month. And we have a line-up for our first year that is a bounty of diversity and talent, including the current winners of the Governor General Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. (Richard Greeen and Karen Solie, Tree Reading, Saturday, March 12.)

Formed in 2010, VERSe Ottawa came together when, “A number of poets and organizers felt the need for our poetry community to have a common voice,” says VO’s Jessica Ruanno. “And VERSe Ottawa works to better promote Ottawa’s wide-ranging poetry community, to act as an effective voice and to provide support to those involved. And what better way to promote the community than with VERSeFest.”

Photo by Jennifer Huzera

One of the many different groups that makes up VERSeFest is In/Words (Tuesday, March 8, 9 pm). For Justin Million, “VERSeFest is an opportunity for us to come together, with Moose and Pussy and Apt. 9 Press, to promote local poets. Michael Dennis and Ben Ladouceur were chosen to read because I feel they may be two of the finest poets in the city who do not receive enough attention for their incredible bodies of work. The festival lets us introduce them to new audiences.”

Apt. 9 Press publishes limited edition, hand stitched, poetry and fiction chapbooks and will be unveiling their first broadsides that night. Says Cameron Anstee, press founder, “I’m thrilled to work with Michael and Ben and it means the world to me that they trust me with their work.”

Wednesday night starts with Voices of Venus, a reading series which celebrates women writers who focus on poetry and spoken word. They are organizing an all-erotica performance with Beth Anne Fischer and a line-up of women writers.

 

Christine McNair and Sandra Ridley will follow at 9 pm (with blUe mOnday, and they are both reading as part of the AB Series pre-festival event). Says Christine, “I’m looking forward to seeing the other events and readings at VERSeFest. There seems to be a wide-range of participants and I’m all for eclectic diversity. And possibly balloons.”

Christine McNair

Ditto for Sandra, “By virtue of the fact that two different events are being highlighted each night, at the same venue, there will be an overlap of audiences. And I’m looking forward to reading to different audiences who I might not usually get to see. And to see other readers, of course.”

And on it goes for the whole week, though it’s not just about readings, page, stage or otherwise.

For rob mclennan (Factory Reading Series, Friday, March 11, 7pm, featuring Marcus McCann and Monty Reid), VERSeFest is a chance to do something different. “I’ve been wanting to run a lecture series for a decade now, &, through VERSeFest, finally have the opportunity to begin. With so much of the festival featuring performances, I thought it would be an interesting mix to ask some local and locally-known writers to discuss writing, to allow the audience some deeper and/or different perspectives into how they (Marcus and Monty) might approach the craft itself.”

Monty Reid and Marcus McCann

Likewise for Dave O’Meara (Plan 99 Reading Series, Saturday, March 12, 5pm), who will be hosting a discussion on words and music (with guests Jim Bryson, Mike Dubue and Megan Jerome). “Lyrics are a form of poetry, and I wanted to get some songwriters together to ask them how they write their songs, but from a word angle rather than a music angle.”

Adds Dave, in his role as a festival organizer, “We hope that our festival of poetry, by emphasizing original thought, bold oration, startling imagery, fresh, innovative language and artful phrasing, will represent another articulate part of the extensive culture of music, dance, theatre, visual arts and literature here in our city.”

David McGimpsey

If that’s not ambitious enough for six months of hard work, the future holds more. “Our intention,” says Rod Pederson, “is to become an international festival, drawing on the strength of page and stage poets from across the world, while still focusing on Canada and showcasing the Ottawa region.”

For a full schedule of events and ticket information, check out the VERSeFest site.

2010 Capital Slam Team,

Capital Slam: Saturday, March 12, 9 pm

The pre-festival fun begins today (March 5, at 7pm) and tomorrow, with the AB Series Reading Series, featuring reading and “playback, a poetry reading” which will see seven different poets reading, reconfiguring and responding to Michelle Provost’s new work: playlist.

And if that’s not ekphrasis to the nth degree, then I no longer have a hat.

continue...

CFSW 2010: National Slam Bout #6

[CORRECTION: A previous version mistakenly identified KP, the fourth member of the Halifax team, as the poet IZrEAL, who was not in attendance at the Festival. This was based on information in the CFSW Program, which had not been corrected at the time the article was written. We apologise for any consequent confusion. -Ed.]

In the Laurier Room tucked in the basement of the Courtyard by Marriott in Ottawa’s Byward Market, four slam poetry teams once again faced a packed, enthusiastic audience to present the best in spoken word.

I had staked out a position on the right side in the third row with Ebony Griffin of the Charlatan. Soon after we took out our notebooks, we were approached by the Bout Manager (Tanya, from Toronto), who was carrying a stack of whiteboards. I immediately thought of Kris Joseph. I shook my head, and raised my camera and pen as a feeble sort of shield.

“Media,” I said, “Conflict of interest. And my hands are full.” Ms. Griffin did likewise. There were enough other potential judges in the room.

The evening opened with Sacrificial Poet Sean McGarrigle of Vancouver, who performed a timely and powerful poem contrasting Mario Lemieux and Omar Khadr, two Canadians whose lives took very different turns each at the age of fifteen.

Zeviathan (Halifax) led the first round with a poem about still photographs as mementos of the dead, and the horror and sacrifice of war. Lochlin Broatch (Winnipeg) followed with a piece skewering the hypocrisy of an “eco-friendly” drunk driver. Next was the first of four team offerings from Burlington; Yogi and Truth Is… presenting a poem denouncing the mental enslavement of cultures by insurgents, invaders, and colonialism. Open Secret (Ottawa-Capital Slam) rounded out the set with his proxy confession of Marc Lépine, not only one of his best pieces, but one of his best and most dynamic performances of it.

From Winnipeg, Dylan Mowatt’s second-round opener was an exhortation to live one’s dreams, follow ambition, and hear the constant knocking of opportunity. Winona Linn (Halifax) drew the audience into the world of the silence of depression and the struggle of stigmatized mental illness. The next performance was a team effort by Ottawa Capital Slam’s PrufRock and Chris Tse, transforming I’ve Been Working on the Railroad into a condemnation and exposure of the mistreatment of Chinese and black workers in the quest to build the railroad that stretches across our country. They were followed by the Burlington team, all four members (Yogi, Made Wade, Tomy Bewick, and Truth Is…) setting the alphabet to the Carol of the Bells, championing knowledge and literacy as the keys to liberty.

John Akpata’s (Ottawa-CS) powerful message against tacit sanction of child abuse started off the third round. He was followed by another Burlington team performance, this time Tomy Bewick and Truth Is… enacting the inner dialogue of an alcoholic that was the highest-scored single performance of the evening, and deserving of every point. Steve Holbrow (Winnipeg) held his own in its wake, however, with a caution to build a world of safety and security for our children through good examples. As the last performance of the third round, JPhat (Halifax) highlighted the hidden and violent discrimination that still marginalizes LGBT members of our society.

In the fourth round, things got heavy.

Another Burlington team effort pitted Made Wade and Truth Is… against each other in an intricate dance of the writing and performance sides of spoken word poetry that transfixed the audience. Chris Tse (Ottawa-CS) followed with a local audience favourite, his lighthearted look at what he appreciates about the opposite sex.

Then came the Halifax team.

There are five members of the Halifax team listed in the CFSW program, but only four approached the stage. As I did not know which was the alternate, and I had only seen three perform that evening, having no prior knowledge of the team, I was about to make a note to follow up in order to credit them properly.

As it turns out, there was no need.

The four members of the Halifax team stood, each at their microphones, raised their right fist in the air, and said, in unison, “This is where El Jones would speak.”

Their silence was echoed by the audience, where it turned into murmurs of approval, the snapping of fingers, and a sustained wave of applause, audience members rising to their feet as JPhat, KP, Winona Linn, and Zeviathan held their ground for three minutes and ten seconds, then stood down to a renewed burst of applause and cheering.

After a moment, the scores were called for: 10, 9.0, 10.0, 9.0, and 5.0. In this case, there was surprisingly no audience discussion or dispute of the scores.

As the last performance before the second bout, the members of the Winnipeg team followed that unprecedentedly poignant demonstration of solidarity admirably, promoting Man one rank at a time from twentieth to first on the list (made by the American Film Institute) of history’s greatest villains.

A fellow audience member and I approached the Halifax team after the bout to express our appreciation for their moving display. Luckily he asked the question I was reluctant to: why was El Jones not performing as part of the festival? The team exchanged glances and said only that they were not permitted to say, but that it would be addressed at the Annual General Meeting the following morning.

Whatever the reason behind it, their gesture—the image of those four poets standing solid and silent—will forever remain etched in my mind.

---

Andrew Snowdon is Theatre Editor for OttawaTonite.com, and believes that words were meant to be heard.

continue...

CFSW 2010: Don’t judge me

“How would you like to be a judge tonight?” he asked.

“Uh.” Stammer. “I.” Wild gesticulation. “But.” Crotch moistness.

“You know you want to,” he confirmed.

“It’s too much responsibility,” I protested.

“It’s just a responsibility. You’ll love it”. And with that a small whiteboard was dropped into my lap and I became one of five randomly-snookered audience judges for the 2010 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, Bout 4.

So this means I don’t have to write a review for the bout, right? Because that would be awkward? Right? I certainly understand awkward, now that I’ve been a judge.

Here’s the deal with judging, in case you don’t know:

• In a slam, teams compete in four rounds.
• After a poet presents a piece during a round, the audience judges jot down a score between 0 and 10, using one decimal place.
• There’s no time to chew over your score. The host will demand to see the judges’ decisions right away, so you need to write down a score while the audience applauds the poet.
• Your scores are read out by the host, and recorded. And so it goes, poet after poet, round after round.
• At the end of the slam, the judges’ total scores determine the winning team.

As far as I can tell, the only non-starter criteria for being a judge is that you shouldn’t be sleeping with a poet. “You can sleep with the poets after the bout,” tonight’s host said. (aside: the immortal words of Stephen Sondheim come to mind here, in imagining this scenario: “the trouble with poet is how do you know it’s deceased?”. But I digress.)

What they don’t tell you, after qualifying you as a judge, is that you’re going to be sitting in an audience surrounded by people who are sleeping with poets. And poets, too.

Our “calibration poet” was a maestro named Kim, from Montreal. I was told our scores for him would set the tone for the rest of the bout. Not wanting to be too effusive, I scored the poor boy low: 6.8. I didn’t mind being the “wicked judge” for the night.

The immediate booing and razzing was surprising, coming from folks who usually use their words. “I think,” I thought, “that I am an asshole!”

I was reminded of my instructions at the beginning of the evening: “You’re going to experience something known as ‘score creep’. You’re going to want to inch your scores up as the bout goes on. Try to resist that and stay consistent.” So: by virtue of my first (low) score, I was doomed to being an asshole all night.

Round one began. The first poet spoke. I scored low. People behind me sucked teeth. People in front of me spun around to see my board, scoffed, and made faces at me.

“I think,” I thought, “that I’m going to get lynched.”

Two poets later, I scored low again. “Where the f#*k did they get these judges?” I heard from behind me.

I resolved to stand firm.

I scored low again in round two. People scoffed. I began planning my post-bout escape.

Another low score: whisperers behind me decided I was the source of a great conspiracy.

Another low score. Friends of poets hissed “HIGHER!”. By this point I was possessed by impenetrable steely resolve. This, friends, is the arrogance Lex Luthor feels. These poets were Supermen and I was wielding whiteboard kryptonite.

At the end of the bout, when final scores were revealed, it turned out that my perception didn’t match reality — the team scores were in a perfectly normal range. This just proved that all of the razzing and moaning from the audience was just good-natured fun. And so now I want to be a judge forever. Take that, Superman.

But hang on. Just to prove that I wasn’t a curmudgeon all night, I’ll close by sharing some of the drops of verbal gold that made it into my notebook, on a team-by-team basis: I may have scored low in general, but this was terrific poetry. These lines struck me hard enough that I needed to record them.

London

• “Friends: joy is our birthright” (Elyse Maltin)
• “I B who I B ‘cuz only I can define my I D” (Dana ‘I D’ Matthews)
• “I wear my heart on my sleeve but I have this bad habit of losing my shirt” (Frankin ‘Wordzworthe’ Davis)

Toronto Poetry Slam

• “I will not remit these weapons ‘cuz I need to make it out safely” (David Delisca)
• “This essay is my desire to quote you so our conversations will be remembered… my educators of consequence were artists” (Fraser)
• “You are lightning. Be just as deadly.” (Kiki)

Calgary

• “FOB? FOB?!? Nobody uses boats nowadays, motherf#$ker!” (Joshua Bartolomé)
• “I don’t teach subjects. I teach students… I teach body odor and boners and pants put on backwards by accident” (Tyler Perry)

Urban Legends

• “Bodies dipped in red liquid like french fries” (Synonymous)
• “We are coming to know how to write poems in the final days of an empire” (Hodan Ibrahim)
• “The hands of my uncles that mop and sweep hold the keys to every room on Wall Street” (Hyfidelik)

continue...

CFSW 2010: National Slam Bout #2

“Are you a poet?”

Missie P., of Victoria BC clutched a stack of whiteboards and leaned over a couple in the second row, asking to determine whether they were disqualified from being judges. Looking around at the audience, it was difficult to spot anyone that looked like they could give the honest answer “no”.

In this first of two bouts of the evening at this venue, the four teams competing were from Burlington, Edmonton, Toronto (Up From The Roots), and the Wild Card team chosen by competition earlier this week.

Festival Director Nathanaël Larochette turned the show over to the host for the evening, Toronto’s Moe Clark.

Danielle Grégoire left her post at the merchandise table for a few moments to take her place as the Sacrificial Poet for the bout, delivering a piece on the theme of youth and changing identity.

The first round started with Made Wade (Burlington) and his rap-influenced, melody-infused journey through a difficult childhood aided by words. Next, Ahmed Ali (Edmonton) chilled the audience with his depiction of an encounter with an child in Somalia wielding an AK-47. Festrell (Wild Card) followed with a comedic, but proud, call to embrace diversity in the form of the Q-pocalypse. From Memo Keisha Monique (Toronto-UFTR) came a stark picture of the erosion of the dream of Martin Luther King in black neighbourhoods, which she likened to the cycle of a self-cleaning oven.

Titilope Sonuga (Edmonton) began the second round with an indictment of several prominent musicians (the “Brown boys”) for domestic abuse. She was followed by the one team performance of the evening: Truth Is…, Tomy Bewick, and Yogi (Burlington) speaking as the last ones standing on behalf of innocent victims, as poets have been tasked to do since history began. Dwayne Morgan (Toronto-UFTR) dissected the tragedy of a brilliant student’s descent into promiscuity as a substitute for affection. To bring the second round to a close, Sean O’Gorman (Wild Card) performed his piece on the different and deeper significances of laughter.

With a subversive (and controversial) twist, Patrick De Belen (Toronto-UFTR) asked not what if life were like cartoons, but what if cartoons were like life. The third round continued with Brad Morden (Wild Card) sharing his own deeply personal thoughts and feelings as a child given up for adoption. Next up was Mary Pinkoski (Edmonton), who examined two parallel stories of love told through the eyes of a student. Tomy Bewick (Burlington) returned to the stage with an acronym-laden protest against labels and the pharmaceutical subjugation of the population.

In the fourth and final round, Steve Miller (Wild Card) tackled marginalization through the metaphor of a crazy spoon. LEVIATHAN (Toronto-UFTR) painted a picture of the continuing mass-entertainment exploitation of harmful black stereotypes that was simultaneously informative and moving. Yogi (Burlington) remembered a victim of breast cancer who had taught him a powerful lesson about enjoying life to its fullest. The last introduction could not have been more fitting and beautiful if it had been planned: Moe Clark stumbled over her name, and Ify Chiwetelu (Edmonton) proceeded to tell the history of her name, and why its correct pronounciation holds such profound importance.

As Moe Clark read the final scores for the bout, the applause was so enthusiastic that I required Jessica Ruano’s help to waylay Missy P. to get the correct numbers.

It is almost impossible to come out of a slam poetry competition without a mixture of shame, pride, and a fierce desire to write poetry that tells the stories and tackles the emotions that rock us to our core as human beings. It’s a wonder there are any people left that aren’t poets, really.

---

Andrew Snowdon is Theatre Editor for OttawaTonite.com, and believes that words were meant to be heard.

continue...

Canadian Festival of Spoken Word 2010

continue...

Raise It! for the Capital Slam Semi-Finals

A poet slowly approaches the microphone on an empty stage.

On the count of three, the audience throws their clenched fists in the air, shouting “Raise it!”

This is not your average coffee-shop turtleneck-wearing finger-snapping poetry reading.

This is slam poetry.

If you’re not familiar with slam poetry, it’s a competitive form of spoken word that started in Chicago in 1984, and quickly spread to other parts of the world.  As a reaction against the sedate academic tradition of poetry reading, slam poetry is a more visceral, outspoken performance style, the content often political or intensely personal.  Most people are rendered speechless after seeing slam poetry live for the first time; the emotional intensity and skill of the performers is unlike anything they’ve experienced before.  Ottawa boasts Canada’s second-longest-running slam poetry series, Capital Slam.

The way a slam poetry competition works is simple: poets present a spoken word piece that must be three minutes or less in length.  They are judged by five audience members on the basis of content and performance, on a scale from 0 to 10 (much like you see in Olympic figure skating, for example).  To calculate the score for a performance, the highest and lowest of the five scores are removed, and the remaining three scores are added together to give a score out of 30.  The poet is penalized if they run over their allotted time.

The release on the Capital Slam website promised performances by Open Secret, Truth Is…, Chris Tse, D-Lightful, Brad Morden, Loh El, Thomas, Prufrock, Brandon Wint, Greg “Ritallin” Frankson, John Akpata, and Sean O’Gorman.  (Like musicians, spoken word performers often choose a stage name.)   Also slated to perform in a non-competitive capacity was Rusty Priske, who had been a Capital Slam finalist for the previous three years.

---

When we arrived at the Alumni Auditorium on the University of Ottawa campus, the lobby area was crowded with people waiting to get in; I recognized well-known spoken word artist Marcus Jameel (who live-tweeted the event) and Jessica Ruano, in a smart red dress taking the official pictures.

Like our theatre community, Ottawa’s spoken word community is very tight; the same people crop up at every event.  Handing money to Danielle K.L. Grégoire in exchange for live poetry performances is becoming somewhat of a monthly ritual; there she was at the door taking our ticket money and stamping wrists once again.

The sight of Rusty Priske moving through the audience looking for volunteer judges was familiar.  A year ago, when I first attended a Capital Slam event, I too was given a whiteboard and a marker and the daunting task of rating the performers.  It’s a bit stressful, because the audience will heartily boo what it considers unjustified low scores, as I quickly learned—the hard way.  One of the judges selected this evening was local entrepreneur Jen Butson, who I had invited to attend; she didn’t know exactly what to expect going in, but you can read about her experience on her personal blog.

Nathanaël Larochette, director of Capital Slam, opened the sixth annual Capital Slam semi-finals by explaining how the evening would proceed; each of the twelve poets, in random order, would perform one piece, there would be a short intermission, then they would perform in reverse order. The scores would be averaged, and the top eight would advance to the finals.

It’s traditional to start a poetry slam with a “sacrifical poet”—a first performer who is not actually competing, but is still scored by the judges, to “calibrate” them.  Before inviting arRay of Words to the stage, Nathanaël explained another slam poetry tradition: to welcome each performer to the stage, to encourage them, and to provide a sense of unity, each audience member is supposed to make a fist.  On the count of three, they are to throw their fist into the air, shouting “Raise it!”

Yes, it feels silly the first time you do it.  After the first couple of times, it comes naturally.  Twelve poets later, you feel like a Black Panther.

Sacrificial poet arRay of Words stepped to the microphone with a single sheet of paper in his hand, and began to read his piece.  About a minute in, he crumpled his paper, threw it to the stage behind him, and confronted the microphone with renewed vigor and threw his whole body into the performance.

The audience was hooked.  The judges gave him scores of 8.7, 8.0, 8.7, 7.5, and 7.9, for a final score of 24.6 (don’t worry about doing the math; all the final scores for the evening are at the bottom of this article).

Chris Tse, a young Asian man with a thick, bushy head of hair, was the first poet to compete, presenting an optimistic piece about his identity and hopes for the future.  He was followed by the nonchalant, casual Sean O’Gorman, whose poem about laughter was well-received by the audience, but not as well by the judges.  Greg “Ritallin” Frankson followed with his highly metrical, hip-hop style poetry.  It seemed to me that the performers were exceptionally nervous; I guess that’s to be expected given the unprecedented size of the audience, and the importance of the semi-finals.

Next up was Brad Morden, in a pale, crumpled fedora.  His piece about searching for his birth mother was delivered perfectly, and won a long round of applause.  Truth Is… took the stage with her soulful, musical voice and varied tempo.  Open Secret took the microphone and broke into a fast-paced, thoughtful political piece.  His performance was met by a standing ovation from half of the audience, prompting Nathanaël to comment “this ain’t no hush-hush live library poetry reading” before introducing the next performer, John Akpata.

John stated “this poem contains words by Rusty Priske” before launching into a powerful piece decrying child abuse, echoing the sentiments and words of Rusty’s A Conspiracy of Shame. “You’re going to die” were the grim opening words of Prufrock’s first piece of the evening, a poem about losing sight of the basics of survival as human beings in our current society.  D-Lightful attacked the microphone with a passionate exposition of the conflict of love.

A cry of “Ezra Pound Lives!” from the audience welcomed Loh El to the stage, where his very personal poem about white privilege seemed entirely at odds with his outwardly sunny disposition.  Crowd favourite Brandon Wint melted more than a few hearts with a poem about love, truth, and illusion.  To close off the first round, Thomas McKinley took the stage; an older gentleman with clear diction, he presented a piece that was as thought-provoking as it was humorous.

Nathanaël called for a “thirteen minute intermission”, during which I bought the Capital Slam 2009 CD from Danielle at the merchandise table.

The second round opened with a second sacrificial poet, Hyfidellik, whose passionate poem describing an uncle being killed for political reasons, with its haunting refrain “There’s a war in me” drew scores of 9.2, 9.1, 8.9, 8.0, and 9.6 from the judges, for a total score of 27.2.

Starting with Thomas, the poets performed their second pieces; Loh El’s poem about his infant son garnered applause from the audience and a personal congratulation from John Akpata.  The clear crowd favourite was Open Secret’s poem commemorating the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre.  Chris Tse ended the second round with a lighthearted, fast-paced piece about girls, ending with his phone number to a wave of laughter and applause.

For the last performance of the evening, Nathanaël called Rusty Priske to the stage.  Rusty took a moment to mention that Ottawa would be host to the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in October; “so I don’t have to follow the rules.”  He beckoned, and Danielle K. L. Grégoire walked onstage.  She looked up at the audience.

“There’s a lot of people here,” she said.

“You took our money!” joked a voice from the crowd.

Together, Rusty and Danielle performed a piece that was grafted together from two poems they had written on the same subject; the terror felt by someone walking alone at night who thinks they are being followed.  These were two poignant pieces to start with, together they present the same situation from two different perspectives, in a telling commentary on how society has changed the way we live and interact, from two of the region’s most experienced poetic performers.

After Rusty and Danielle’s performance, Nathanaël took the microphone again to announce the eight poets who would be moving on to the final round: Loh El, Brandon Wint, Brad Morden, Prufrock, John Akpata, Truth Is…, Chris Tse, and Open Secret.

The eight finalists will face off against each other on June 5th, at the Alumni Auditorium; doors open at 6:30 pm.  Arrive early.

And get your fist ready.

---

Andrew Snowdon is a theatregoer, concert attendee, and writer living in Lowertown, Ottawa, sandwiched between a MacBook and a typewriter, with a cup of coffee.

Photography by Jes Lacasse.

---

FINAL STANDINGS:

Finalists:

Open Secret: Round 1: 9.7 / 9.9 / 9.2 / 9.7 / 9.9 | 29.3 Round 2: 9.6 / 9.2 / 9.1 / 9.8 / 9.9 | 28.6  Final: 28.95

Chris Tse: Round 1: 9.2 / 9.7 / 8.3 / 9.4 / 9.8 | 28.3 Round 2: 9.7 / 9.9 / 8.9 / 9.4 / 9.8 | 28.9  Final: 28.60

Truth Is…: Round 1: 9.3 / 9.2 / 9.2 / 9.5 / 9.7 | 28.0 Round 2: 9.6 / 9.0 / 8.9 / 8.8 / 9.5 | 27.4  Final: 27.70

John Akpata: Round 1: 8.9 / 9.0 / 9.5 / 9.3 / 8.2 | 27.2 Round 2: 9.5 / 9.2 / 9.4 / 9.3 / 8.7 | 27.9  Final: 27.55

Prufrock: Round 1: 8.4 / 9.3 / 9.6 / 9.1 / 8.7 | 27.1 Round 2: 9.3 / 8.9 / 9.4 / 9.2 / 9.7 | 27.9  Final: 27.50

Brad Morden: Round 1: 8.9 / 8.9 / 9.5 / 8.5 / 9.4 | 27.2 Round 2: 9.7 / 8.5 / 8.7 / 9.3 / 9.2 | 27.2  Final: 27.20

Brandon Wint: Round 1: 8.8 / 8.7 / 9.0 / 9.3 / 9.7 | 27.1 Round 2: 9.7 / 8.8 / 8.2 / 8.5 / 9.8 | 27.0  Final: 27.05

Loh El: Round 1: 8.8 / 9.2 / 9.2 / 8.9 / 8.9 | 27.0 Round 2: 9.5 / 9.5 / 8.6 / 8.8 /8.9 | 26.7  Final: 26.85

Runners-up:

D-lightful: Round 1: 9.6 / 9.8 / 8.9 / 9.1 / 8.9 | 27.1 Round 2: 8.7 / 8.7 / 8.8 / 8.9 / 9.3 | 26.4  Final: 26.75

Greg “Ritallin” Frankson: Round 1: 8.0 / 8.4 / 8.2 / 9.0 / 8.5 | 25.1 Round 2: 9.4 / 8.9 / 8.7 / 9.3 / 9.0 | 27.2  Final: 26.15

Thomas McKinley: Round 1: 8.8 / 9.5 / 8.7 / 8.6 / 8.8 | 26.3 Round 2: 8.6 / 9.0 / 8.3 / 8.2 / 8.3 | 25.2  Final: 25.75

Sean O’Gorman: Round 1: 8.5 / 8.2 / 8.8 / 8.2 / 8.3 | 25.0 Round 2: 9.2 / 8.7 / 8.7 / 8.9 / 8.9 | 26.0  Final: 25.50

continue...