My friend Daan Doesborgh made it to the final of the Dutch national championship Poetry Slam, so we ventured out to Utrecht to support him.

The winner would be chosen by a split vote: half of the vote was up to the official jury, and half was to be measured by audience supporter noise. Since I knew several of the contestants who made it to the second round I had to make some tough choices regarding who to support with the most noise. Only two poets could fight it out in the final round. Fortunately the judges made the toughest decisions and the final was to be between Daan and Martijn Teerlinck. These guys are quite familiar with each other's work so it was going to be a close race.

It ended up being very, very close (0.1 dB difference in crowd noise) but in the end Martijn was declared the winner.

If you look closely at the photo with the scores in the background, you'll notice that there might be something amiss... which the sound guy figured out after only a few minutes. He announced that there was a problem and they'd have to review the scores again. It gave us all flashbacks to the infamous incident of wrong winner being announced on live TV. Confusion reigned and since no one knew quite what was going on some people took the opportunity to jump on stage to voice their discontent.

Eventually order was restored and it was decided to do a re-vote, which through an organized effort on our part (a few voices were lost) went to Daan. Martijn was stripped of his newly acquired title and Daan was declared the winner after all, but clearly no one was entirely happy with how it all went down.

The mess was somewhat cleaned up by the organisation afterwards by announcing that Martijn and Daan both receive the first prize. Still, it's a blight on what should have been a fair competition. Hopefully they'll sort out the judging system for next year so that One True Winner can be chosen. Until then, all hail the kings of Poetry Slam: Daan Doesborgh and Martijn Teerlinck!