SLIDESHOW: Verbal Boxing Show Down for Bragging Rights at Framingham High

Updated: With winners names at 2:10 p.m.

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The 10th Annual Framingham High School Poetry Slam was held Wednesday night, April 30 at the Amazing Things Arts Center.

For those unfamiliar, a "slam is a competition between teams of poets who perform their own original work, bringing poetry off the page and onto the stage in a gloves-off, no-holds-barred verbal boxing match with judges chosen randomly from the audience." 

The Framingham High Slam began as a class project in 2004 but has since become a community-wide event.

Seven preliminary rounds, consisting of 50 teams of poets, was held earlier with the finals last night.

The winners:

• First place: "Slam Down for What" - Mia Charifson, Stephanie Lopez, Alexandra Devane and Lizzie Eisenbud
• 2nd place: "Peanut Butter and Slam Jam" - Zach Finn, Shauna Golden, Nicole Phalen, Lukas Stock
• 3rd place: "Moon Dawg and the Boyz" - Keysseh Otsuka, Sergey Dushkin, Josh Billings

The top three teams earn a small cash prize but more importantly bragging rights in the hallways.

"This is our 10th anniversary senior poetry slam at FHS," said Framingham High teacher Alison Courchesne, who helped start the program a decade ago. "These student-poets have seen a generation of seniors before them participate in poetry slams, and they have embraced this tradition. We're so excited that performance poetry has become such and important part of the culture of FHS."

The event is sponsored in part by the Framingham Education Foundation and PTBO.

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Special thanks to Kevin Cummings of Cummings Photography n Framingham for photographing the event for Framingham Patch, while I was at Night 2 of Framingham Town Meeting.