You might be
wondering…

The Bigfoot Poetry Festival is a three-day poetry event that happens in early summer in downtown Portland, OR. While changing from year-to-year, typically this festival offers such features as poetry open mics, writing / performance workshops, poet showcase(s), a poetry market, and a poetry slam tournament.

The Bigfoot Regional Poetry Slam is a three-day competition, part of the Bigfoot Poetry Festival. Sixteen teams of four / five poets compete in team poetry slams across the first two nights, culminating in a Finals Stage event where the top four teams win prizes. Click here for the official rules of the competition.

This is a question we have received (no joke) a surprising number of times! Often, regional tournaments/festivals tied into spoken word poetry find their title through a reference to said region (examples: Southwest Shootout, Southern Fried, Rustbelt Slam, Midwest Poetry Mashup, NorthBeast, etc.). When naming this festival back in 2018, we wanted to give it a distinctly Pacific Northwest title.

In short - while we welcome poetry on all subject matter (including cryptids), no, all of the poetry read will not be about Bigfoot. Sorry!

The next Bigfoot Poetry Festival will happen in early summer of 2027.

No date has been set at this time, though it will likely take place sometime between early June and mid July.

The festival takes place over the course of three days (a Thursday to Saturday). There is always an optional meet-and-greet event the Wednesday evening before the festival begins for anyone traveling into the city a day early.

The festival’s date changes annually, so always make sure to check Bigfoot’s website or social media around the end/beginning of each year to find out what the next dates will be.

The registration fee for each competing team of 4-5 poets is $175.

Besides registration, there is no fee to attend any of our events, with the exception of Finals Stage - our only ticketed event.

Every dollar paid into registration goes toward the cash prizes awarded at the end of the final event.

In addition to glory, applause, and trophies, winning teams receive cash prizes!

With us raising team registration from $150 up to $175 in 2026, we updated the prize money amounts. The prizes are now: $1,400 for first place, $700 for second place, $450 for third place, and $250 for fourth place.

Sign-ups for teams of poets will open in early 2027. We will announce the registration dates in November 2026.

To register, you’ll click the registration button on the home page of this site (or find the link on our Instagram or Facebook), which will take you to a Google form to fill out for submission. There are sixteen spots, and the first sixteen teams to submit will be the teams registered and competing.

Any teams that submit after the sixteen spots are filled will be placed on a wait list.

After you have received confirmation that your team is registered, you’ll have one month to send the registration fee of $175 (we’ll provide various electronic payment methods) to officially reserve your spot.

If payment is not received within a month of registering, and we have not had any communication on a small extension, your spot will be given to the team at the top of the wait list and your team will be moved to the bottom.

Teams can be formed in any way that works for the poets. Teams formed by local slams, mics, college clubs, etc. are all accepted at Bigfoot’s Poetry Slam. Pickup teams, formed by four to five poets from one or more poetry scenes, are also accepted. The process for how teams are formed is up to the poets and/or venue sending the team.

If you submit registration on behalf of an established scene/mic but then would like to turn the spot into a pickup team, you must provide proof that the initial team is 100% disbanded and approves of you taking over their registered spot.

No, there are no age restrictions. The preliminaries and Finals Stage venues will always be all ages.

Not every other event location is guaranteed to be all ages, especially late night events, though we will do our best to find venues accessible to any age. Age restrictions, if any, will be communicated to registered teams in advance.

Yes! Only one representing team per show is encouraged, but if your city has multiple poetry venues, or some local poets who’d like to form their own separate pick up team, all are allowed to come out and compete.

At this time, due to restrictions and resources, our tournament only offers a team competition.

No, technical difficulties cannot be anticipated, nor can they be immediately fixed. For example, if a mic goes out during a performance, it would probably be worse for the performer to have the tech person stop their performance to work on the mic.

We will do everything in our power to have 4-5 mics at all our prelim venues (we can guarantee 5 mics on finals stage), and we always have an audio person on hand for set up and mic checks.

YES, a poet can perform in a group piece who is not a primary author of that piece, BUT the poet MUST then perform in another rotation as the primary author.

Yes! We need as many hands on deck as possible to help make sure the festival runs smoothly. About two months before, we’ll share a Google form on social media for folks interested to sign up.

Volunteer jobs include time keeping, score keeping, various Finals Stage jobs (concessions, merch table, ticket taking, etc.), helping move equipment, and more.

For hosting and bout managing preliminaries, we ask that folks reach out to us directly if they are interested, but only if they have plenty of experience in either of these roles. Hosting and bout managing Finals Stage is reserved.