Round 1: Regional Qualifier
Moreton Bay Heat
Judges Scores
8.9, 8.3, 5.7, 7.5, 8.5
Final Score
8.1
Scoring System
Olympic
Final Place
3rd
Read the Fucking Poem
Commentary appears after the poem instead of before on this one!
The Poem
CW: misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, racism, antisemitism, genocide, polyphobia, biphobia
BBC, 25th of January 2025
First they came for the immigrants
And I spoke out because I’ve read the rest of the fucking poem
NBC, 3rd of February 2025
Next they came for transfolk (HI)
And I spoke out because I’ve read the rest of the fucking poem
Pink News, 11th of July 2025
And now they’re coming for the bisexuals
And suddenly cisfolk have read the rest of the fucking poem
And now our beloved acronym is just LG
And anyone who has read the fucking poem can see what’s next
Next they will go after the lesbians
And then finally the gays
Total eradication of us and our beloved acronym
Be not the final goal
So read the fucking poem
There’s no way they’re stopping there
If you aren’t straight, white, and Christian you’re next
Read the fucking poem
They’ll eradicate those “filthy polyamorous adulterers”
Read the fucking poem
History says the Jews are never safe
You can’t deport Indigenous folk
But the Trail of Tears and Stolen Generation shows that genocide is an option
Read the fucking poem
Next they will subjugate all women
As per the fucking poem
While Australia claims to have read the fucking poem
We’re more like the Americans than you think
And so
Should you not want a real-life Gilead
Should their final solution not be your goals
Then re-read the fucking poem
For there will be nobody left…
To speak out for you…
Referenced News Article Sources
1st Stanza
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0jnz8q6p32o
2nd Stanza
3rd Stanza
https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/07/11/stonewall-bisexual-monument-website/
If you need to talk right now, you don’t have to face this alone
Crisis Support
QLife (LGBT only)
1800 184 527
Beyond Blue
1300 224 636
Lifeline
Call 13 11 14 | Text 0477 131 114
13Yarn (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander only)
13 92 76
If you ever feel you might act on thoughts of harming yourself, please reach out straight away: call 000 or go to your nearest emergency department – they’re there to help, and getting support early can really save lives.
Alexi’s Commentary (The Poem)
I am so excited to finally be able to share this piece with my wider audience.
When I had the idea for this piece, I knew that it would have the perfect amount of anger and passion for not just a slam piece, but an APS piece.
Writing this piece was very fun, but performing this piece and doing it justice does not give me joy.
Performing this piece properly requires a lot of passion and even more anger, and makes my entire body shake from the emotion behind the words.
From an artistic and structural perspective this piece is inspired by the poem that is being referenced in every stanza.
The piece is also written with the intent that from the first sentence you know exactly which poem is being referenced: First They Came by Rev Martin Niemöller.
As a historical figure the queer community tends not to revere Niemöller in the same way that other communities that were devastated by The Holocaust do because the omission of queer folk from his original poem was not an accident, Niemöller (like many who opposed the Holocaust at the time) believed that the attempted eradication of the queer community was justified and the right thing to do. As such this piece is as originally written in order to finish his piece in a modern setting, addressing those that he intentionally omitted from the piece. Naturally my piece took a life of its own and turned into a response piece in its own right, rather than just a re-working of a historical poem.
When writing a call to action against fascism and the far right that argues that queer eradication is just the beginning, there are so many historical and events to choose from (a couple that it was incredibly regrettable to leave out were the AIDS epidemic and Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian People) I needed to keep a specific theme and structure if this was going to have any chance at being under two minutes and so I decided to keep it as proven events that have happened within Trump 2.0 (I don’t normally include sources in my political pieces but just for this one I’ve included the news articles that were directly referenced).
This is already the longest commentary I have ever written about a poem so I’ll begin to wrap this up. As far as poems go, this has to the most powerful piece I’ve ever written (move over Dear Mr Turnbull) and even if it is an incredibly difficult poem to perform properly, it is still a piece I am beyond proud of and now that I’m finally able to lift the piece’s need to know basis, I will definitely be performing it again soon.
Alexi’s Commentary (The Event)
Tonight was bloody awesome.
This was my first ever time entering APS and so I didn’t think in my wildest dreams that I would have only just missed out on qualifying!
Placing third in any poetry slam is an incredible result, but to come third in my qualifying heat of my first ever attempt at nationals is just out of this world.
As per APS rules this was my heat. I may or may not sign up up for the wait list at Brisbane City heat, but I’m pretty confident they’ll have twenty awesome artists competing so this is most likely the end of my 2025 run but I’m more than happy with my result.
Before I close off my APS Regional Qualifier experience I just want to say a huge thank you to Word Travels, City of Moreton Bay Council, and North Lakes Library for hosting this round of the slam and giving me the opportunity to compete.
I want to thank my incredible partner EmJah for supporting me with my APS attempt and the endless feedback he gave me while I was workshopping and drafting my APS qualifiers piece.
Finally I wish to thank every single person who came and spoke to me after the slam about what my piece meant to them and how powerful it was that I brought such a powerfully political piece to a traditionally conservative area and a very special thank you to every single person who booed the judge that gave me a 5.6 (but hey that’s my favourite thing about art, not everyone is going to like it)
Alexi Edwards | Spoken Word Artist 