Over the next twenty-four hours, ten poets from Toronto (and several fans of spoken word, yours truly included) will be boarding planes headed towards Halifax in order to attend the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. These ten, forming two Toronto teams, will be competing against poets from seven other Canadian cities in a battle for spoken word supremacy and bragging rights for the next year.

If last year's Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Toronto was any indication, not only will the event feature some of the best performance poetry ever seen in this country, but the Toronto teams are set to make our city proud. Finishing in second and third place last year, the ten poets representing Toronto this year are set on showing the rest of the country that there is some serious spoken word talent to be found in our oft-maligned city.

In addition to the national slam championship, the festival also features some really exciting workshops, including the CFSW Youth Day, Voices For Change Performance and Panel, guerilla poetry readings on the streets of Halifax, and the Poetry Challenge in conjunction with the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

You've already had the chance to meet five of the Toronto poets heading out to Halifax tomorrow, but here's the entire list of spoken word artists that will be representing our city:

Up From the Roots Team

• Boonaa Mohamed
• Tomy Bewick
• L.E.V.I.A.T.H.A.N.
• Dwayne Morgan
• MP

Toronto Poetry Slam Team

• Krystle Mullin
• The White Noise Machine
• Arianna Pozzuoli
• Amanda Heibert
• Truth Is...

While I know everyone can't suddenly take a few days off of work and fly off to Halifax, if you do have the time and resources to make the trip out to the festival, do consider it: not only will the members of the Toronto teams appreciate the support, but I can guarantee you'll have a lot of fun.

For those of you that can't make it to the festival, I'll be updating blogTO with updates every day, so be sure to keep coming back to check out the progress of our teams.

And for a last minute taste of what you'll be missing, the Up From the Roots team will be holding a fundraiser event tonight at Cervejaria starting at 8pm. Come out and support the team and see some of the poets that will be representing your city at this year's festival. There's more information about the fundraiser on the Facebook event page.