Judges and special guest for semis heat two announced

Here they are, your judges for Word - The Front Line Semi-Finals Heat # 2, an amazing mix of poets, educators and social change advocates. 

We will see you at 1pm on Saturday, August 12 at Auckland Town Hall. 

Rosamund Britton is an English teacher and a Learning Community Leader at Hobsonville Point Secondary School.

Ros is proud of her Welsh, English and German heritage and is also a New Zealand citizen, having emigrated to Aotearoa in 2004. She lived in the Far North for nine years, where she led the English department at Bay Of Islands College and first discovered the value of spoken word to empower learners.

You’ll often find Ros walking or cycling around Hobsonville Point where she lives with her 9-year-old daughter Freya and 7-year-old son Finn, always trying to spin too many plates at once. She enjoys going to watch a movie or a play with friends, swimming on the east and west coast beaches and reading a good novel in the hammock in her tiny back garden. 

Michael Moore is a father of two supremely good eggs, his daughters Sienna and Asher are the light of his life. Michael loves them to the moon and every alternate moon, in every parallel universe including Marvel, DC, Te Ao Maori and back.
 
Michael is also a committee member of NZ Poetry Slam and Mana Tane Ora Waikato. He is a National Poetry Slam Runner Up and Runner up at the 2016 Going West Poetry Slam. 

Michael is an avid fan of youthful expression and understands the power of story sharing. 

Jess Holly Bates is a queer Pākehā writer, actor and thinker. She likes complicated things, and complicated people.

Her latest gig has been playing a meanie on national television, which is why her haircut is such a normative dream but she usually likes to facilitate controversy and play with whiteness.

Her acclaimed spoken word theatre show and published anthology Real Fake White Dirt has toured from London to Palmie North. Her show the Offensive Nipple Show brought the intersection of the female body and patriarchal shame rhetoric to its knees.

​In 2017, she has been working on sleeping more and doing less - and the results speak for themselves.

 Richie Hardcore's fighting career spans more than 20 years from martial arts tournaments to Muay Thai titles.

Now he’s hung up the gloves, he fights for social change rather than titles and trophies. For Richie and countless others around the world, fight sports provide a healthy outlet for the hardship and frustrations that life hands us. 
 
As a self-confessed ‘pragmatic idealist’, Richie channels his energy into doing his best to leave the world a slightly better, healthier and happier place than how he found it. He does this as a Muay Thai, Boxing and personal trainer, community worker reducing drug and alcohol harm, campaigner against domestic and sexual violence, radio host and advocate for social change.

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Special guest performer ALPHA MUZIK

​ Angus "Alpha" Grace was first exposed to music through school bands. Since then he has had a varied career including television appearances and competitive dance.

In 2013 he began to take recording music seriously, and studying hip hop influences and history. It was during this time he began to start honing his lyrical skills on a studio mic. 

In 2015 he met DJ Exile through Tha Cypher Movement. Together they have participated in and promoted multiple cypher events, introducing MCs, rapper, DJs and hip hop artists to the art form.