Poetry in the University lecture hall

The first ever spoken word event in the series had to be moved from lecture hall 12 to the larger lecture hall 1 due to overcrowding. After the stairs were fully occupied, the Campus TV team had to shut the doors and send some people away. The atmosphere among the 500 listeners sitting and standing in each and every corner of the hall grew more intense with each performance, on themes such as finding a flatshare and diet camps, coffee cravings and constructing an ark, or going to weddings and village life.

The first ten events were hosted by Sven Stickling and Nico Bein, two renowned slam poets from OWL. Since the third event, the lecture hall slam has taken place in the Audimax, which seats about 1,000 people. Nevertheless, some people still have to be turned away when the auditorium reaches its full capacity. The line-up is always outstanding, so that over the years many German-speaking slam stars have been guests in Bielefeld. Among them were several winners of the German championships, inlcuding Jan Philipp Zymny, Patrick Salmen and Sebastian23.

“One Day” is not a flash in the pan
The 5th lecture hall slam caused a sensation – but only in its aftermath. As always, the slam performances were filmed by Campus TV and uploaded to Youtube. The contribution by Julia Engelmann from Bremen with the title “One Day/Reckoning (One Day Baby We’ll be Old)” went viral and became the most clicked German-language Youtube video of the year. This was not the only performance, however, which put this Bielefeld-based competition for young slam poets firmly on the map.