Five performers of a range of different ages took part in the Moree heat of the Australian Poetry Slam in front of a live audience of about 20, where they had the opportunity to impress the judges with their original spoken word, poetry, hip hop, monologues and stories.

Nora Carrigan impressed the judges the most, winning the Moree heat and a $100 gift card from the library. Runner-up was Jasmine Robinson.

Both Nora and Jasmine are now invited to the regional final, where two people will then be chosen to perform at the Sydney Opera House for the national final.

The winner, who is chosen by the crowd, will go on to represent Australian Poetry Slam in an Asia Pacific tour which includes the Bookworm International Literary Festival in China, the Ubud Writers' and Readers' Festival in Bali, Sydney Writers' Festival and Byron Writers' Festival. They are also offered a writers' retreat in a NSW forest and a publishing contract with Pitt St. Poetry.

Last year’s winner, Philip Wilcox, hosted the event in Moree, as well as a workshop at the library prior to the competition.

Eighteen people took part in the workshop, mostly students from Moree Secondary College and a couple of their teachers.

Moree Library coordinator Samantha Geatches said it was a wonderful day.

“It was a great success, it sounded like they all had a great time,” she said.

The Australian Poetry Slam is one of the largest performing writers' programs in the world.

More than 1,000 writers perform annually for about 20,000 people across the country.

The Poetry Slam is a live literary performance competition where the audience is the judge.

All performing writers are given a microphone, a live audience and just two minutes to impress the judges with their original piece.

Five judges are picked randomly by the MC.

After each performance, judges hold up score cards using a 1-10 scale, with 10 being the highest. Of the five scores for each poet, only the middle three scores are counted.