He comments on society with humour and infectious prose; his words are laced with rhyme and flow.

Meet Canberra's CJ Bowerbird — a poet who's challenging the very notion of spoken word art. While yes, he could loosely be defined as a slam poet — a style in which he excels, mind you — CJ is constantly refining his craft by incorporating foreign influences like theatre and storytelling to supercharge his performances.

“I describe myself as a performance poet,” CJ explains. “I take equal measures of written poetry and performance to present it on ­stage to audiences. I have gotten to the stage where I have the opportunity to do more of the performance side of poetry through slam.

“I was fortunate enough to win the Australian Poetry Slam Championship at the end of 2012. That's what's given me a lot more opportunity to do poetry as a performance rather than as competition anymore.”

By the way he describes the APSC, it sounds as if the competition was fierce. It's a nationally-hosted event packed with heats, state finals and every year over 400 attendees rock up to the national finals held in Sydney. With that said, CJ is surprisingly humble about being the current title holder.

“Because it's a competition and it takes a random selection of people from the audience to judge your poetry, there's always an element of randomness to it. What I was performing on that night really worked with that particular audience and worked with the judges, so I was very lucky. I was among some very good performance and slam poets to be selected to win.”

Winning the APSC also gave CJ the opportunity to rub shoulders with and perform alongside some of the finest writers on the planet at the Sydney Writers Festival earlier this year. However, it appears the experience was most memorable because it proved the power of poetry.

“At the Sydney Writers Festival, I got to perform onstage with two amazing international spoken word performers — Anis Mojgani and Kate Tempest from the US and Kate Tempest from the UK. And the most amazing spoken word event I've ever been to was on the last day of the Sydney Writers Festival.

“Kate and Anis just did one-for-one poems on stage, and people were hanging from the ceiling and crowded in this room to hear them. [It shows] there are a lot of people interested in spoken word and poetry.”

“If I can make a performance more rounded and fuller, then it will reach people in so many different directions. It can give them a more satisfying performance rather than just reading words on a page.

“Last weekend in Byron Bay after I had performed someone said, 'good words, but your face was really expressive'. That made me feel really good because obviously whatever emotions I'm trying to perform with my words are actually being portrayed.”

Continuing what's undoubtedly the biggest year yet for the emerging artist, CJ will also be making his first-ever appearance at the Queensland Poetry Festival when it kicks off here later this month. And by the sounds of things, audiences will be given the best of both worlds from the wordsmith.

“For a traditional slam poetry feature you'll often get up and do 15-20 minutes of your poems, so you might do five to six poems and just read them out separately. So, what I'm thinking about doing for one of my performances is that.

“For my other performance, though, I'm writing something specifically for the QPF. It's a bit of a love story — a boy meets girl, boy loses girl kind of thing. It'll be in a simple form, but it'll be a 15-minute piece that will combine several different movements in poetry to tell a story.”

The QPF is shaping up as a milestone event for CJ because it's yet another opportunity for him to mingle with and learn from other like-minded creative individuals as well.

“I'm really excited about meeting some of the other poets, particularly some of the ones coming Canada — there seems to be a strong connection between the festival and Canadian poets. I'm really looking forward to performing and sharing the stage with some of the other poets, but meeting the other people and talking about what inspires them is what I'm looking forward to most.”

CJ Bowerbird performs 'Cars. Lightning. Rain' on August 24 and 'Kissing The Dawn' on August 25 at the Queensland Poetry Festival.