Local poet Elena Banfield may have only recently come to her craft but she has already won the local slam poetry night at the Legion and took home second place in the poetry section of the Kootenay Literary Competition.
“Poetry wasn’t something I did at all until less than a year ago, and then what I was writing was taking shape as poems so I went with that,” said Banfield.
It was after university that she found herself writing again.
“When I came back to writing I really started doing it because I was finishing university and I was working in this sort of soul crushing office job, and I just started writing down what I was feeling,” said Banfield.
Recently she started performing her poetry at the local slam poetry night.
“It’s always hard to get up on stage, but it’s really hard to get up on stage and share work that’s very close to you and personal,” she said. “And then in slam it can be a bit hard to take having strangers slap a numerical value on your work in a matter of seconds.”
Banfield is the current slam champion after taking the stage in her second attempt.
The next slam is this Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Legion Hall in Nelson.