The regional leg for a national poetry slam competition to be held in September has drawn to a close with the winners of the Kathmandu and Lalitpur regional slams being unveiled in the Capital on Tuesday. The winners of the Kathmandu Regional Slam were announced after two concurrent finales for Kathmandu and Lalitpur were held in Thames International College and KU School of Arts respectively on July 2. Nubisha Uprety, Nabin Bhusal, Praveen Shrestha and Meghana Maharjan were winners in Lalitpur while Anurag Zimba, Sarus Sharma, Pradip Ghimire and Rupesh Bhattarai triumphed in Kathmandu. These winners will now represent Lalitpur and Kathmandu districts in the QC Awards 2016: National Poetry Slam, which will be held from August 30 to September 3 in Kathmandu. The regional slams drew a total of 120 applicants from Kathmandu, Bhaktapur and Lalitpur.

The National Poetry Slam is the first ever national-level slam competition being organised by the Word Warriors and Quixote’s Cove and is slated to have eight teams from around the country compete against each other. So far, the teams for Ilam, Dhangadi, Kathmandu and Lalitpur have been declared through regional slams in each area. The Ilam regional poetry slam was held on May 28 and Dhangadi recently concluded its regional slam on 30th June. The regional slams for Surkhet, Chitwan, Pokhara and Kavre are slated for July.

The selected teams will then be assigned a coach from Word Warriors who will coach the team throughout August in preparation for the final event.