Twelve-year-old wins national slam poetry competition with 'Dear ChatGPT'

Two months ago, Blake Mackenzie's year six teacher introduced his class to slam poetry.

While it was the first time 12-year-old Mackenzie had encountered the art form, his teacher was impressed with the poem he produced.

"[She] said, 'Hey, this is really, really good … I think you should enter this in a competition,'" he tells ABC Arts.

Mackenzie took her advice, advancing through his local heat in Newcastle and the NSW state final to make the Australian Poetry Slam national final, held at the Sydney Opera House.

There, he performed I Love My Country, a poem about racism and inequality in Australia, and Dear ChatGPT, reflecting on the impact of AI on everyday life.

Mackenzie's performance saw him named 2026 Youth Champion, an experience he likens to "a dream".

"I was so full of adrenaline, and my heart was beating so fast. It feels great even now, to be honest," he says.

Central Australian poet Bivor, an environmental consultant who emigrated to Australia from Bangladesh three years ago, was named 2026 Adult Champion.

Bivor, who lives in Alice Springs, performed two poems: Ourselves, and Politics Is Doing You, a rousing plea for political literacy.

"I feel like people need to know about politics," he says.

The pair will share a $20,000 prize package, which includes publishing opportunities and invitations to perform at writers' festivals in Australia and overseas in their roles as 2026 Australian Poetry Slambassadors.

Originating in Chicago in the 1980s, slam poetry can take any form, from a story to verse, as long as it's performed on stage in a competition.

"There's actually no such thing as slam poetry — there's no genre," Words Travel CEO Miles Merrill, a Chicagoan who brought slam poetry to Australia when he moved here in the 90s, explains.

"There's nothing that distinguishes it other than it's performed writing."

Poetry slam contestants have two minutes to perform their work, with points docked for exceeding the time limit.

Judges, picked at random from the audience, hold up score cards rating each performance.

"We have a very scientific system where we throw five chocolates into the audience," Merrill says.

Every contestant competes in the first round, with the top five going through to the second.

Points are awarded for literary flair, the quality of the performance and its emotional heft.

Arantza García Ferrand, the 2025 Australian Poetry Slam champion, says the best slam poetry blends good writing with strong performance elements.

"The trap that sometimes people fall into is preferring one skill over the other," she says.

"This isn't just a theatre monologue, but it's also not just reciting poetry out loud. It needs to be a good mix of both to really engage your audience."

Slam poetry is defined by its accessibility, allowing poets to bypass traditional gatekeepers like editors and publishers to reach an audience.

"Anybody can get up on the mic," Merrill says.

"[As a result] there's a lot of people from diverse communities representing themselves."

García Ferrand says poetry that is too highbrow can fail to land with the audience.

"When you're writing, you need to … make sure that the audience understands everything you're saying and you're not getting too complex with the word choices or the concepts."

García Ferrand, whose family emigrated to Australia from Peru when she was two, explores themes of family, immigration and culture in her work.

She also draws inspiration from everyday life.

"I love taking, like, a small intimate moment that I experience and then expanding on that and seeing how I can reflect it on bigger world issues," she says.

At the 2025 national finals, she performed Nine Suitcases and a Pram, a poem recounting her family's immigration story.

"[It's about] everything they packed in the nine suitcases they brought to Australia — but, because it's a poem, getting a bit more metaphorical about what's in the suitcases," she says.

García Ferrand also speaks Spanish and has been experimenting with integrating the language into her poetry.

"When I first began, I was scared to use it because to me it was like, who's going to understand it in the audience?" she says.

"After having spoken to a few other Spanish poets that do use it in their work, it was such a beautiful reflection to be like, no, actually, the audience doesn't need to understand every word. And even if they don't understand the words, they understand why I'm using them."

García Ferrand says there is a thrill in baring your soul on stage.

"Very few times in our lives do we get to have a space just for ourselves to be able to talk about something incredibly personal to us.

The emotional responses poems can elicit from the crowd always surprise Merrill, who teaches a slam poetry course at NIDA.

"We're not using props or costumes or stage settings but still we're getting tears and standing ovations for people who are just standing there with a microphone," he says.

"It reinforces this idea that authentic, vulnerable, direct human-to-human communication is one of the most powerful things we can have, particularly in this age of screens."

And what is Mackenzie's advice to prospective slam poets?

"It's not about the competition, it's not about the points, it's just about you expressing yourself and being passionate about the message you're trying to share.