Meet Solli Raphael
By Solli Raphael
Solli Raphael was crowned the Australian Slam Poetry Champion at the Sydney Opera House in 2017 in an all-adult competition at just 12 years of age, the youngest ever to earn the title. Since then, Solli has performed at events such as the Adelaide Fringe Festival, closing the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and a TEDx Sydney Conference in June 2018.
At Brisbane Writers Festival this year, Solli will be joining us for a few events including the Marion Taylor Opening Night Gala as well as hosting a few Word Play sessions on Slam Poetry as part of our education program. Keep reading to know more about Solli Raphael and what inspires him, in his own words.
Have you ever met a kid who would rather write, read and hang in the veggie patch than play video games? Well, if you haven’t, that’s ok because you have now.
My name is Solli and these are some of the things that I enjoy doing when I’m not doing school work, or hanging at the beach.
I'm from Coffs Harbour, although I’ve recently moved to Melbourne. When I was in primary school I spent a lot of my time after school in the outdoors, playing tennis, running a couple of km’s and, planting, growing and eating home grown organic fruit and veggies. I’ve always connected with nature in a way that made me appreciate it and when I started to learn how people and corporations weren’t looking after the environment (I was around seven), I started writing stories, comics and poetry to express my thoughts. It wasn’t until I was about 12 that I heard of slam poetry when my mum showed me some rap battles on YouTube for my home-schooling work. One YouTube lead to another and soon enough I couldn’t stop writing my own slam poetry. I started off by being super inspired by slam poets like Harry Baker, Phil Kaye, Luka Lesson and Ian Keteku, although my inspirations grow every day and I really like Sampa the Great, H.E.R. and Shayne Koyzan.
Inspiration for me often comes from simple things in life like spending time in forests or walking the city streets. Sometimes inspiration falls into my hands when hearing or reading about environmental catastrophes, climate emergencies, inhumane issues, political conflict or animal cruelty. I live a really green and clean life where I make sure I minimise my carbon footprint as much as I can with things like eating plant based foods, saying no to plastic and I pick up litter all the time to help keep our oceans clean.
I’m really excited to be a part of the Brisbane Writer's Festival because sharing my poetry with people from all areas of life and of all different ages is great fun! ...also because I aspire to create little positive impacts of change wherever I go.