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PUREandGOODandRIGHT @ The Sozzled Sausage

In Performance Poetry on March 28, 2012 at 5:05 pm

12/03/2012, Leamington Spa

-Reviewed by Claire Trévien-

Venue and Atmosphere

The Sozzled Sausage is one of those faux-decadent bars with fairy lights, rustic tables and curly-footed upholstery. As it was a Monday, the venue was empty, save for one of its side rooms in which the open mic took place. The room itself was awkwardly crowded by unnecessarily large tables that led my friends and me to sit in bus-like fashion, one behind each other. It became rapidly full, leading to other audience members sitting outside of the room.

The setting also meant that, in spite of a microphone, noise from the bar frequently polluted the readings. However, what it lacked in practical charms, it more than made up for in friendliness. The mostly middle-aged regulars were all too happy to strike up conversation and make potential performers feel at ease.

PGR

PGR is very clearly a labour of love run by soon-to-be-wed couple George and Fran, and supported by Kim while they spent the last four months in India. It has been running for half-decade and has a well-oiled set-up: twelve open mic spots divided by an interval, as well as a guest poet, who performs on either side of the interval. George compered the evening and was a warm and entertaining host, quick to welcome newcomers to the stand, and often introducing acts with a little anecdote or amusing story to give the spectator a context. Thus, Jean-Pierre is a ‘painter of words’, while he self-deprecatingly called forth his own reading as ‘doggerel’.

The Open Mic

As you might expect, humorous poetry was prevalent throughout the evening.  Highlights included John Mason’s surreal take on the ‘what if’s’, and John Myers’ increasingly hysterical series of poems on giving blood and dreaming of food.

Unsuitable dating was a theme of the evening, which began with Rosemary’s ‘Single and 60’, a poem that described the seven dwarfs of dating: ‘he lived with his mother / now she was too frail / he wanted another’ (Sneezy). The emphasis on humour, while useful for keeping a drinking audience’s attention, was all too often an end in itself rather than the means to express anything deeper. This is fine, of course, as proved by Rose Biggin’s brilliant ‘Complete Berks’, which took us through Shakespeare’s entire play output thanks to an ‘I walked into a bar and I ordered a Shakesbeer’ narrative.

There wasn’t just original poetry, Augustus sang ‘You’ve got nothing to look forward to’ and other amusingly eeyore-esque songs on love and the insides of bars. Jean-Pierre Kunzler (whose voice eerily resembles Peter Serafinowicz’s in his appearance in Black Books) read from Edward Fitzgerald’s translations of Omar Khayyan’s poems.  Pauline movingly shared with us the poetry of her friend, who died 26 years ago, which included the wonderfully succinct ‘The Housewife’s Nearly Tantrum’.

The Guest Poet: Mstr Morrison

Mstr Morrison has only been performing for ten months but is already stacking up the accolades; most recently he won the Cambridge Hammer and Tongue Slam. He also wore a very good hat on the night. It’s easy to see what makes him so popular, he was a charismatic and sweetly charming performer, and his narratives were equally endearing with their pin-balling rhymes.

However, the content of his poems did not always live up to their delivery, suffering at times from an overtly preachy slant, as in ‘Ask Mona Lisa’ when he called to halt the hogwash and the spoonfeeding.  Elsewhere, in ‘Strings and Stars’, the use of multiple characters helped to evade these pitfalls in spite of its clear anti-capitalist agenda. Seen from the point of view of a teacher, it gave voices to a primary school child romanticizing a homeless musician ‘How can I experience and fully appreciate the delights of nature with paper walls and a roof between us?’ His poem ‘Danny Boy’ was another highlight, an attempt to make things right with a brother he’d bullied in his youth: ‘if only my only crime was igniting your laughter’. While in ‘Perfection’, he quoted Oscar Wilde, so really, it’s hard to have anything negative to say.

Summary

PGR is a fun, unchallenging night of spoken word poetry and music in a supportive atmosphere. It’s a good place to start if you want to test a new piece or dip your toes into the poetry scene, and many towns could do with its equivalent. An event you should definitely endorse if you live in the area.

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Hammer & Tongue Cambridge featuring Anna Freeman

In Performance Poetry on March 26, 2012 at 10:26 am

@ The Fountain Inn, Cambridge

08/03/2012

£6.50-£2

- reviewed by Seán Hewitt -

When I arrive at a poetry slam, I usually anticipate having to execute a kind of soul-splitting which I’ve nearly perfected now. It goes like this: the outer-me sits listening to cringingly-confessional poetry read in a faux-‘working-class’ accent, as the inner-me writhes like a foetus in my torso trying to cover its ears and saying ‘NO MORE! PLEASE, NO MORE!’ Thankfully, I was spared (for the most part) from undergoing such a procedure at tonight’s Hammer & Tongue: Cambridge. This evening’s slam often relied on comedy, and tongue-in-cheek melancholy, as opposed to the more common ‘earnestness’ that I’ve come to expect from more amateur slams.

Hammer & Tongue is a much-lauded night, and this evening’s event comes at the end of a two-week tour featuring guest poet Anna Freeman, who really stole the show. But more on her later.

Let’s start at the start.

The upstairs room above The Fountain is bare and spiritless, and there’re very few people here when I arrive to give any sense of atmosphere. In fact, at one point, when the host, Fay Roberts, was doing some plugs for a show in another venue, someone shouted out, with a tone of desperation, ‘Will it be warmer there??’ Okay, so the room might not be great, I thought, but that’s not why I’m here.

The trademark Hammer & Tongue banner stands in the performance area, promising professionalism, and I get a nice ego-boost when I’m asked to be a judge for the slam (anyone who knows me knows judging is my forte), so things are looking up. The two supporting poets tonight are Anthea Lee (the first Cambridge slam finalist) and Jessie Durrant.

Anthea set the evening off on a shocking and bleak tone, giving a starkly emotional performance of a poem about sexual abuse; but she shrugged the seriousness off in favour of comedy in her next few pieces.

Then Jessie, a poet who almost dances out her own poems, came onstage. She tackled serious issues of social isolation head-on, a brave move which paid off in places, but at other times led her to saying things that were a little obvious. There was a continuous ‘slam-style’ repetitive intonation in her voice which quickly started to grate, but she managed to counterbalance it with a husky quality which made her voice seem on the edge of breaking. She put it down to a cold and, if that’s the case, then her illness was fortuitous, actually working to her advantage.

Then came the slam

And my time to shine like the star I am (an unexpected rhyme, I assure you). Actually, I was so afraid of seeming bitchy that I spent most of the judging time asking the old woman next to me what she thought, so I could offset the blame. The thing is, the people in this room (including the ‘judges’) are so friendly, so nice, that I don’t think that harsher (or what I call ‘realistic’, ahem) judgment would go down too well. In fact, at one point I gave a slammer 8.6/10 and was booed for my harshness. Seriously.

The slam only featured two poets (well, three if you count the guy that got up to ‘freestyle’ but then sat down without performing, blaming it, 8-Mile-style, on nerves), and the first was up and off so quickly that I didn’t catch her name, though she did stop long enough to confess herself to be a ‘poetry virgin’ before launching into an admirable performance for a first-timer.

Then came Anthony Fairweather, dressed like a modern-day Wyndham Lewis, who gave an easy but humorous poem about the impending and inevitable disaster of the London Olympics.

Overall, the slam was okay. Nothing to write home about.

Anna Freeman reminded the audience what performance poetry was all about.

Anna (tonight’s guest feature) shone out like a beacon at the end of a night that had balanced out at palatable mediocrity. Her poetry is well-considered, genuinely hilarious, and always leaves room for poignancy. We get a real sense of who she is from her poems, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all about her. She takes us on a whistle stop tour through births, break-ups and sex, but none of it was cringy.

When I go to a poetry slam, I like to keep myself a little tally of ‘onstage orgasms’ (where, unsurprisingly, the poet pants their way through a poem about sexual climax), but there were only two this evening (yes, poetry-slam virgins, I said only two) and neither came from Anna, who managed to get across all the tingling sexual desire of her situations without collapsing into easy cliché.

Summary

Fay, the host, did a brilliant job of pulling together the pieces, but there was a little incoherency in the evening, and a wild variation in talent (always a risk in an open slam). But the crowd seemed to be enjoying it, and the barman especially seemed to have had his eyes opened to the world of performance poetry. But Anna’s superb performance really highlighted that there was something missing in parts of the evening; and that was a lack of wit, a lack of real poetic invention, and so a lack of real inspiration.

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Sage and Time @ The Charterhouse Bar 22/02/12

In Performance Poetry on March 19, 2012 at 6:00 pm

- Reviewed by Dana Bubulj -

Perhaps it was the weather that kept this night to an intimate gig of fewer people than usual, which is a shame, as it was another event of the fantastic standard that we are used to with Sage and Time.

Hosts

The hosts opened each half with their own poems, setting the tone of the evening with effusive introductions to both the open mic poets and the excellent features.

  • Richard Marsh’s take on the bizarre love between two people at the gym, each embodying each other’s ideals was a nice opening to an evening whose theme seemed love-bent. It’s a shame he forgot sections, but with asides like “basically, it turns out she likes him too” to continue the narrative, he acquitted himself admirably.
  • Anna Le‘s All The While was a tender take on love whilst the world continues. She acknowledges politics and injustice (“teachers not renumerated”) and in doing so, the declaration becomes more powerful for not being rose-tinted. There’s a beautiful calm, amidst the “commotion” of the world, where the poet is “inescapably falling in love with you”.

Features

  • Dean Atta has a great stage presence, performing his confessional poetry with confidence. His sensual first poem was about Grindr in Italy, where “new technology found intimacy…in an ancient city”. His second, My Love, (5th Draft),was a delicate portrayal of feelings not ready to be pinned down. As a “manifesto of love”, I Don’t Want To Write You Poems, also sought to define feelings with a lovely mix of ephemeral messages left on mirror steam and physical demonstrations.
  • Mother Tongue is an interesting one about not sharing his mother’s first language (Greek), leaving him an outsider when “forgetting to translate”. I loved the line: “our mother has swallowed her tongue”.
  • This is not supposed to be Therapy was a great take on the expectations placed upon us by both society and ourselves. Congenially taking us through familiar doubt (“I am a leader… right?”), Atta turns away from what we’re “supposed to do” as a way to define the self, vowing instead to do so individually by “any app necessary”.
  • He finished with the poem that brought him most into the public eye via Youtube (& now iTunes), “I am nobody’s nigger”: a commentary on language (“don’t tell me it’s a reclaimed word”) in relation to racially incited violence (“that’s one of the last words Steven Lawrence heard”). It’s performed passionately, with stirring references to ancestry and the slave trade, finishing elegantly: “call me nigger cause you’re scared of what brother means”.
  • Deanna Rodger was an exuberant performer whose work is very rooted in her past.  My favourite begins: “I always get asked, where’re you from?”. It’s a great take on the frustration of growing up in London, steeped in British culture while also (and more visually apparent) “a product of miscegenation”.
  • Her main focus is her youth, mostly in its innocence. In her 22 Now and 22 to 19, she we see her hanging out after school, mooching with friends on routemaster buses like “fresh princesses” with a breathlessly sincere nostalgia that that certainly took a few of the audience back. Young love doesn’t escape her canny gaze: from the plausibly confused 1432, complete with premature declarations “slipping out as easily as he slipped in” to the obsessive Love Ambitions (I liked wanting to be their student ID  “so you need me to get into the library”, and that she peppered her delivery with interjections like “I feel like a stalker!”)
  • Turning to the present were two poems: If Chloe Can and Nowadays. The former, about a young girl’s shattered self esteem, was earnest and hopeful. Nowadays tackled contemporary apathy in a heartfelt plea for people to once more pay attention to the world around them (“who cares about voting nowadays?”) While not new in content, it was passionately performed and a great close to her set.
  • Peter Hayhoe and Sarah Redington performed Dalston, a poem accompanied by music. Descending into Someone Like You worked, but could have been more effective in a smaller dose for those inured to Adele. I enjoyed most the poem’s performative aspect: its emphasis on the act of story-telling (“I say, ‘your coffee is getting cold’”), complete with distinctions between on truth and might-have-beens: “Pause. This is not a true story…The real story involves…”

Open Mic

  • Richard Purnell spoke of the N word in rap music as a white fan, addressing its contribution to the vilification of black people in society. He could have been more fluid and the beginning section (“what rhymes with…”) was horrifically awkward.
  • Lettie McKie performed three sonnets of which the third, about her elderly neighbours, was the most powerful, starting from a lovely first line “before the hospital, he always slept beside her”.
  • Edward Unique‘s Valentine’s Day poem, in the interests of balance, had a clearly defined three part structure, but alas lines like “she said I’m too nice for her” and “[it was left for] the nice guy to sweep up your stupidity”, left a bitter taste.
  • Joshua Seigal‘s AA Milne-esque Kid’s Poem about bullying was appropriately simplistic with a comic twist. His adult poems displayed an extensive vocabulary, with fast paced patter strewn with literary terminology. Camden Town was my favourite, conjuring peacefully stoned hipsters with “hours to shoot from the sky like ducks”. He is up in Edinburgh this year with We all love Llamas!.
  • Ben Newberry’s character pieces were nice enough: my favourite was “Royal Oak” a nod to the old guard of traditional pubs, less transient than their surroundings.
  • Sophie Cameron‘s modern fairytale of a Prince and his poor yet “ridiculously attractive” squeeze certainly uses some visceral imagery. Juxtaposing love that “transcends all bounds” with raucous sexuality (“and by swooned I mean he wanked his dick off”) Her second poem, “I am a posh cunt” set up a familiar straw man who likes oysters “because they’re expensive rather than their taste”.
  • Jethro performed three sombre poems, only one of which was his own. His delivery suited  Tennyson better than  Keats, but was best for his own, Time Passes, a lament for his lost brother who feels “just a moment ago”.
  • James Webster performed two poems: Fate (a little spoilt by phone scrolling), about unexpectedly meeting and bonding with someone not seen in years, (“not inevitability but an extra glass of wine”). The second was nicely done, filled with entreaties to “listen” to poetry “beneath the skin”, in its beats of “iambs and trochees”.
  • Keith Jarrett, finished the evening with two poems: an uplifting old favourite that with, fluid plays on words, takes on political slogans, making them his own for people who “believe in change but [are] still short changed”. The main argument of I do not believe in casual sex was that there’s “no such thing” because “casual suggests ease”. Its playful conclusion, “however…I do believe in a damn good time…”, lightened what could have been interpreted as overt moralising.

To conclude: Fantastic night. More soon, please.

There will indeed be more, coming up soon on the 28th of March! – Ed

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Edinburgh’s International Women’s Day All-Female Slam

In Performance Poetry on March 17, 2012 at 11:16 am

06/03/2012

@ The Banshee Labyrinth

- reviewed by Harry Giles -

A couple of days ago we reviewed the International Women’s Day event Poetry in the Parlour, now continuing this theme Harry Giles reviews another of the plethora of IWD events, this one in Edinburgh – ed

The Event

Poetry slam can be difficult, chaotic, oppressive, liberatory, or many other things besides – but at its best it’s a beautiful expression of poetic community. At its best, slam stops being about competition and starts being a celebration of poetry’s diversity  and of our direct and passionate relationship to an audience.

Edinburgh’s International Women’s Day All-Female Slam, organised by local poet Claire Askew, set out to redress the male bias often prevalent in Scotland’s slam scene (a bias both in numbers competing and in those winning) by showcasing some of the most talented and ambitious of our female poetry talent. The make-up of the slam was also aiming to break down some of the perceived barriers between page and stage, welcoming poets more comfortable on the page into the performance arena.

This deliberate mix led to one of the most surprising and delightful slams I’ve ever attended. Though I attend and compete in slams regularly, I often find myself twitching impatiently through tired forms and heard-it-before comic turns – but every performer at the women’s slam brought something fresh and new to the stage. The audience was packed into the Banshee Labyrinth, filling every available corner, but host Claire Askew’s welcoming enthusiasm made sure everyone was happy. Although her nerves were sometimes clear, she used her passionate belief in the event and warm encouragement of every single poet to ensure that every participant has the best possible time.

The Slam

In the first round, Gayle Smith and Rose Ritchie both gave us comic observations from the tradition of Scots ballad verse. Both performances were rough and unpolished, but had real heart and warmth. Hayley Shields and Theresa Munoz‘s poems, very much from the page-led tradition, had the complexity and richness of imagery we often miss in slam, though again more practised and paced performance might have helped the audience appreciate their depth. Elizabeth Rimmer and Katie Craig both had wit and charm, and performed with enough aplomb to carry the audience with them in true slam style. A surprise performance late in the night from Lara S Williams, although she arrived to late to compete, treated us to a romp through the difficulties of trans-national identity – something that certainly spoke to a diverse audience in a country like Scotland.

Amongst the stand-out performances in the first half, qualifying for the second, Katherine McMahon startled thhe audience with real joy in her delicate but celebratory performances of “Shine” and “Forest”, which drew on the American declamatory slam style as well as a more English simplicity. I’d like to see more texture in her delivery, to help navigate her often quick and surprising poetic moves – she feels like a performer still discovering the power of her rage. Camilla Chen‘s tight, sparse verse journeyed through both snap puns (“Camilla Chen is a vegetable”) and moments of astonishing grace and insight (“Tell me the sea”). All I could wish for here is more time to enjoy the full range of what she’s reading. Tracey S Rosenberg treated us to a dry transatlantic wit with both “Genderclusterfuck” and “So where are you from?” – she found a raconteurish style that kept well away from the cynical comedy prevalent in slams through its audience-focussed warmth, while still revelling in wordplay and cynicism. Sally Evans – the editor of the venerable Poetry Scotland, who it was thus a real delight to find at a slam – gave us poems so rich in meaning and direct intention, so pleasingly funny, that her inexperience with a microphone barely mattered at all.

The Final

Tracey and Camilla both qualified for the final, and both again changed pace to perform some of the most lyrically beautiful moments of the evening. Tracey’s “Miracle”, which she revealed to be a wedding poem, was an extraordinary expression of love, while Camilla’s “France, Spring 2011 (as soundtracked by Badly Drawn Boy)” evoked waves of place, experience, and feeling with sharp, quiet stanzas. Both poets seemed slightly fazed by finding themselves in the slam final – or perhaps it was simply tiredness from the many highs of the evening. Nevertheless, it was a real pleasure to hear these last performances.

The star of the night, though, and its eventual winner, was Rachel McCrum, whose frank and resounding poems captivated the audience every time. “Are the Kids Alright?” reflected on urban unrest and violence with an enquiring and passionate concern, while “Last Night Ashore” delivered timely reflections on masculinity and poetry. Her finest turn was “Broad”, for me the highlight of the night, which moving journey through the working female bodies of the poet and her mother. This performance, in the first round, held every breath in the room: a poet talking simply, directly and beautifully about her own experience of her body while she stands just a few feet away from you is just the kind of extraordinary magic that slam at its best can work.

The Allies

Alongside these great female talents, Claire had invited a number of local male performers (including myself – see the disclosure below) to be sacrifical poets, or warm-up acts, before each round. The male performers took this opportunity to express their solidarity, and both performed with great aplomb. Matt McDonald‘s devastating poem on male shame, “Open Letter to a Rapist”, was delivered with an unrushed quiet sincerity and written with honesty and, astonishingly, tenderness: it was a highlight of the evening for many.

Colin McGuire‘s exploration of Glasgow’s queer masculine identity, “Filthy Man” brought the house down multiple times per minute – but had real depth too. The decision to include male performers was important to the integrity of he slam – it demonstrated quite clearly that this was about celebrating diversity rather than separating female poets somehow, and allowed men to vocally express their support for the slam

Colin’s set saw an extraordinary expression of just how strong the sense of solidarity and community in the venue was. Earlier in the evening, Rose Ritchie had been forced to leave the stage when, as has happened to so many slam poets, nerves claimed her memory of her poem: Colin used his own stage time to welcome her back to the stage to perform the poem she had left unfinished, which she did brilliantly.

It’s hard to say whether this slam was so exciting just because it was an all-female slam. Certainly, a sense of purpose and solidarity united the audience behind every performer, and gave each performer a definite support and welcome to play to. Certainly, a slam setting out to improve diversity will always have a better chance of surprising us with something fresh. But in the end, the success is down to something much more basic: great performers, speaking directly to the audience with skill, style and originality. That’s something that every slam needs. I hope the legacy of the first all-women’s slam is that we see it more.

Claire Askew’s own reflections on the event can be found here and here.

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Poetry in the Parlour – Oxford International Women’s Festival

In Performance Poetry on March 13, 2012 at 4:14 pm

@ Blackwell’s

07/03/2012

- reviewed by James Webster -

So last week it was International Women’s Day, a wonderful day where many celebrate the women who have impacted positively upon their lives and the world in general, and to take a look at womanhood and the ongoing struggle for true equality. I decided to celebrate it a day early by heading over to Poetry in the Parlour, an event featuring several of my favourite feminist poets, at the Oxford International Women’s Festival. Featuring some wonderful poets, book readings and folk music, it was a thought-provoking and entertaining look at feminism, sexuality and equality.

  • Lucy Ayrton, co-host of Oxford Hammer & Tongue (next event tonight in the Old Fire Station), hosted and opened the show.
  • Sabotage have seen Ayrton a few times before, and it’s a credit to her intricate poetry and her engaging style that every time I see her perform I find something new to like about her poems. ‘Fuck You Corporate Land’ remains funny as ever, but in a more contemplative setting the crushing daily depression of having to chisel and change yourself to conform to expectations was much more poignant.
  • ‘Bonfire Juice’ is always good for its sense of fun and nostalgia, but it’s also a complex piece where fond remembrances are tinged by sadness and relationships are difficult and varied. The way it invokes taste and smell (in this case of Lapsang tea) is also very powerful and cleverly done.
  • ‘I Want Never Gets’ has long been one of my favourite of Ayrton’s poems, a smoothly performed piece that uses lightning quick rhymes and ongoing repetition to decry social injustice. Lucy’s blend of comedy, tongue-twisting linguistic acrobatics, complexities and powerful social messages all come across wonderfully here.
  • Dan Holloway’s poetry makes me sad in a good way. ‘Monsters’ was a bereft feeling journey through streets filled with society’s detritus, drawing parallels between different groups society deems monstrous or undesirable, from street violence to men in suits who ‘took the arteries of hope and opened them and let a generation bleed out’. A powerful and pulsing piece on how ‘the only monsters on these streets are the ones we choose to see’.
  • ‘Her Body’ is more heart-breaking each time I hear it. A startlingly gorgeous piece on a person’s death being appropriated as a ‘theme park for ideologues’ and their body being turned into a metaphor. As Holloway points out the real truth is ‘far higher’ and her body is just that.
  • ‘Mentalist’ was probably the poem of Dan’s with the strongest voice, on the people who will be ‘choked beneath society’s conceptual thumb’ by the government’s ‘workfare’ and NHS reforms. It used a great rat-tat-tat machinegun of violent rhyme, pointing out the catch-22 faced by those with mental health conditions: if you’re happy you can work, but if you’re not then you’re dangerous. A chilling and potent treatise on how people will try to go along with the Con-Dem reforms even when it takes ‘an act of heroism to get out of bed’, how even when people are deprived of life-saving support they will still cling to peaceful protest. A poem everyone in this country should hear.
  • He’s also organising Not the Oxford Literary Festival from 27th to the 30th of March.
  • Reading from her dystopian novel ‘The Miracle Inspector’ Helen Smith span us a tale of an underground rebel poet called Jesmond, a kind of ‘informal poet laureate’ bringing social messages to secret poetry events. The way she wove tiny differences between modern society and her dystopia was very effective in crafting a world that’s terrifying by increments.
  • She also successfully evokes the image of a poetry scene that captures the spirit of the scene today, but stresses its importance as a tool of expression and resistance. I think every poet recognises the moment she described when you see another poet’s work that’s ‘like picking up a snow globe only to see there was a real city’ inside.
  • And the ending where she pitched harsh violence against a disconnected internal thought process was chillingly good.
  • Verity Heir’s ‘Sweet Pea’ had a strong rhythm, but it faltered slightly as she stumbled and rushed a little over the page, making me think she’d be a stronger performer if she performed from memory. The poem used a natural metaphor of a garden to represent self and fluid/pansexuality. It also gave a great description of co-dependency in a relationship.
  • A perceptive piece on asexuality, ‘Imaginary Friend’ created a really good description of relationships as a sharing of minds, quirks and of co-habiting the same intellectual, rather than physical, space. Ace stuff. But presenting asexual relationships as ‘imaginary friends’ is possibly unintentionally problematic?
  • And ‘I Dance from My Hips’ entertainingly discussed the ways we learn gender while young, how its taught from an early age and people can be pressured into conforming to gender stereotypes. It ends with a phenomenal description of androgyny and how we can ‘annex ourselves, our quirks, onto our genders’.
  • Paul Askew started with the amusing line ‘I’m actually a bit disappointed, I thought I’d been booked for an International Ladies’ Night, and this isn’t what I’d been expecting.
  • Lacking any ‘right on’ poems, Paul had decided to created one for the night and so treated us to a set-piece of poems constructed entirely from words out of Vogue magazine. He claimed that he hadn’t succeeded in crafting a message, but in his own absurdist way, he succeeded marvellously and hilariously.
  • What he ended up with was a love story between Snow White and a pinup with a ‘feather-light’ volume of hair, all crafted using the pretentiously skin-deep language of Vogue. A love story of commercialised and vacuous words that commented on the consumer culture of girls’ mags.
  • While his comic aside ‘To Do List’ was taken largely from the credits page, that randomly crossed with absurd sexy-talk and then a bizarre aside on why you shouldn’t ‘wipe your arse with a £50 note’ as it’ll set off a chain of events leading to an inevitable break-up, but it’s ok to use a £20 as you’ve ‘earned a little glamour’. Very amusing and surprisingly critical of advertising as a means of happiness/freedom.
  • If you see Tina Sederholm perform she will ‘probably do poems about knickers’, Lucy tells us in Tina’s intro.
  • She doesn’t start with knickers, but instead goes straight into sex with a poem on how sex education doesn’t prepare you for the reality. The poem is a professionally performed tirade of filth, listing positions and worrying about ‘residue’. Pleasingly foul, but ending on a quietly lovely note.
  • ‘Masterclass’ blended humour with chocolate sweetness, while ‘Rules of the Game’ is another really sweet poem on how you must accept and love a loved one’s flaws such as ‘early morning flatulence’ or ‘CSI: Miami’ (though she’s moved up to Law & Order now, she promises us) and love them ‘over and over and over’. A lovely concept on accepting flaws.
  • Mrs Price’s Parlour finished the night with a charmingly jangly and upbeat set of folk songs focussing on stories about or told by women. From drunken maidens ringing up bar tabs, to sweet love stories and women holding up men at gunpoint to see if they’ve been faithful, they gave a mix of lovely, raucous and insightful snatches of folk from a woman’s perspective.

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The Farrago Zoo Awards and New Year Slam 27/01/2012

In End of year round-up, Performance Poetry on March 8, 2012 at 2:20 am

@ The Rada Foyer Bar

- reviewed by Issy McKenzie -

This thing called ‘Slam’

When Sabotage asked me if I’d like to review a poetry slam, I had some reservations. My taste in literature runs out at around 1918, so I only had the vaguest idea what slam poetry was.

I had images of being put on the spot by people who knew ten times more about the subject than I did, or being exposed as a fraud and frogmarched out of the RADA foyer bar by beret-wearing bouncers who understood postmodernism. I even took notes on a few articles about performance poetry, presumably in case there was some sort of test.

When I reached the venue, though, I was very quickly put at my ease. People were friendly (even before I mentioned I was here as a reviewer) and more than happy to explain how things worked. There was definitely a real sense of community here; one that seemed happy to welcome newcomers into the fold.

Overview and a loving tribute

The first half of the show started with a tribute to Fran Landesman, nominated posthumously for Best Overall Performance/Reading, and I would encourage readers to look up the work of this highly talented lyricist. A smooth and uplifting performance from Sarah Moore, with Miles Davis Landesman accompanying.

Throughout the awards, which had been decided by online ballot, we were also treated to a number of non-competitive performances by nominees and winners. Highlights included Nia Barge‘s highly charismatic deconstruction of the beauty myth, and Kemi Taiwo‘s flawless verbal barrage of anti-war protest, but these were by far not the only strong performances of the evening. I only wish I had the time and space to talk about them all.

The Awards

  • Best Performance by a UK Poet: Mark Niel from Milton Keynes, who encouraged the audience to “live every day like you just had your first kiss”, a polished performance showing a great deal of vocal versatility.
  • Best Performance by a performer working in English and another language: Susana Medina, with translator Rosie Marteau.
  • Best SLAM! Performance: Amy Acre, delivered to rapturous applause. Her performance of Blackbird, a highly sensual poem of sexual fluidity and self-doubt, did a lot to explain why she seemed to be a crowd favourite.
  • Best Farrago Debut Feature Performance: Amy McAllister. This Irish poet had a deceptively underwhelming stage presence; her visceral, earthy and fluent performance was one of the highlights of my evening.
  • Best Performance by a performer using spoken word, comedy or music: Miles Davis Landesman & ensemble. This was followed by a performance by Miles accompanying singer Kath Best. An enjoyable tribute. I would love to hear Kath singing from a more soulful repertoire, as it is clear this would suit her voice immensely.
  • Best Performance by an International poet: Penny Ashton (New Zealand), who sadly couldn’t be here tonight, due to the trains from New Zealand being delayed that evening.
  • Best Overall Performance/Reading: Fran Landesman, awarded posthumously for a performance at Farrago only days after the death of her husband. One poet remarked that it was “the most courageous performance [they] had ever seen”.

The Slam

The second half of the evening kicked off with performances by the hypnotic-voiced Abraham Gibson and UK Slam Champion Harry Baker.

If I still had lingering fears about slam being inaccessible to me, then Harry Baker‘s love poem about dinosaurs put them solidly to rest. With his strong geeky charisma and his talent for seamlessly combining rap influences with maths jokes, it is clear that this performer will go far.

Then came the competition.

It soon became clear that since I was neither performing in the slam, nor friends with anyone in the slam, nor “in a sordid sexual relationship with anyone in the slam” (I am not kidding, this was one of the criteria), I was one of the few people eligible to judge. I applaud this attempt at objectivity, although it was somewhat negated by the tendency of the audience to boo when lower-than-average scores were given. When this happens on X factor, I throw stuff at the screen, but I didn’t think that response would be appropriate here. Still, whilst perhaps meant in good humour, it is never conducive to a fair competition.

To the MC John Paul O’Neil‘s credit, the whole process was explained clearly, so even as a complete newcomer to slam I was able to pick it up very quickly. However, I did notice that the scores were perhaps more disparate than they should have been, which I learnt afterwards is a common phenomenon at slam events. This should probably have been explained to us on the night in order to avoid “score creep” (the process by which judges award higher scores as they have more fun and drinks – ed).

Highlights of the slam included Katrina Quinn, with a breathless and highly evocative performance that showed a lot of potential; Kathleen Stavert, whose fluent and conversational style made me want to hear more, and Lettie McKie, a first-time performer who delivered a highly promising ode to chefs, although her choice of subject matter didn’t grab me.

The Result

The winner, by .1 of a point, was Anthony Fairweather with an energetic and well-delivered image of the Olympics gone wrong. Anthony obviously has a great deal of potential as a comedy poet, and had the audience laughing a number of times. In retrospect, digs at “the health and safety brigade” are a little old even for this Victorian scholar, but that is my only real criticism. A well-deserved victory.

I have to confess, I expected to cringe a lot more than I did. My experiences of non-performance poetry groups and writers’ circles have occasionally been just short of traumatic. However, this was far from the case at Farrago. Although there were some weak performances, all of them had at least one positive aspect, and I even found myself awarding perfect tens to two separate poets.

There were fourteen participants in total, all of varying abilities. Although previous Sabotage reviews have criticised this aspect of Farrago slams, I think it has the advantage of making the slam seem accessible and welcoming to newcomers whilst still being entertaining for non-participants. Perhaps more experienced poets and performers might need to supplement their circuit with more selective events, but there is a definite sense of inclusion and community here, and I would definitely like to come back and attend in a non-reviewing capacity.

Conclusion: Any kind of intra-community “award ceremony” always risks being elitist, but the Farrago Zoo New Year Slam Awards successfully managed to avoid this. A highly enjoyable and accessible event. Clearly Farrago’s diversity is one of its strengths.

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CB1 Poetry: Escalator Poetry Competition 2010/11 Winners Event

In Performance Poetry on March 5, 2012 at 8:39 pm

@ The Punter in Cambridge - 28/02/2012

- reviewed by Seán Hewitt -

Venue and Atmosphere

Coming in from the cold, I wait in The Punter’s main room, looking around awkwardly until admitting defeat and asking the girl behind the bar where the poetry reading was. She points me outside again, over the small yard and across to a small converted building, barn-shaped and cosy. Inside, candles adorn the tables and give the audience (who probably average double my age) a rosy, red-wine glow. It looks to be standing-room only (though there’s always the option of a welcoming, middle-aged lap to perch on), but I find a nice chair in the corner, and sit down, happy to dodge some of the mothering glances I’m getting from certain wine-warmed women.

CB1

CB1 Poetry started a major new series of readings in Cambridge city centre in 2007, which serve as a welcome antidote to the often-insular and esoteric style of the so-called ‘Cambridge school’ of poetry, which centres around the University (as most things do in this small, picture-book city). And tonight’s offering promised an impressive line-up of accomplished writers.

The Open Mic

The evening sets off with an open-mic. Here, we’re treated to poems that move from love- to folk-song and back comfortably, with each poet getting two minutes in which to flex their metaphorical muscles. Though the threat of amateur archaisms lurks just beneath the surface, and often rears its head in rhymes like ‘sorrow’/ ‘morrow’ (I mean, who actually uses the word ‘morrow’ without first placing tongue firmly in cheek?). Similarly, dreaded Sentimentality stands hand-in-hand with Mr. Cliché, waiting in the shadow like a pair of unwelcome party guests which the poets desperately try to usher away, unnoticed. However, the crowd are pleased, and the open-mic offers an easy introduction, a nice warm-up for the main act.

The Features – Escalator Award Winners

The three poets who are our ‘headliners’ tonight, so to speak, are all winners of the Writers’ Centre Norwich Escalator Award (2010/11), and together have a list of awards to rival a post-Grammy Adele. Sarah Roby, admired by Ms. Carol Ann Duffy herself, kicks off her reading with a poem called ‘Protest Song’, which gave us pop-culture references galore, though often tends to just say things outright, not letting her obvious poetic skill work as hard as it could. Likewise, her reading didn’t always do justice to her work: when an audience only gets one chance to hear a poem, we need to feel it in the voice and to be able to grasp its importance from the delivery. Maybe we could reapply Pope here in saying that ‘the sound should seem an echo to the sense’.

Maitreyabandhu (who has been, I’m told, ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order for the last 20 years) is the second poet from the Escalator scheme, and seems to favour narratives and sequences to shorter, more economical poems. Again, I felt like it was hard to envisage the original poem from the performance, since the latter gave little audible sense of line-breaks or rhythm, doing a disservice to the poems’ structures.

Maitreyabandhu plumbs his childhood for inspiration, which he tells us often comes during meditation, but this often gives the sense that his poems are too well-mapped from the beginning: it’s as though he knows exactly what he’s going to write when he starts off, which means that the poems miss their chance to take leaps of faith, and to really soar. However, this all changes when he reads selections from the 21-poem sequence in his pamphlet, which are much more assured, and more certain in what they want to mean.

In the case of this evening, it was definitely true that the best was saved until last. Tom Warner, who has picked up an Eric Gregory Award alongside having a pamphlet published by Faber in 2010, stole the show with his imaginative and varied range of poems, which give us such a sense of their speakers’ characters that they are conceivable as Browning-esque dramatic monologues. He takes us confidently through desert islands, networking events and mining strikes, all the time maintaining an impressive surety of voice despite the wild variety of his subjects, and his reading polished off the evening enjoyably.

Summary

There was plenty on offer here, and there’re plenty of events to come in the series, so if you missed this, it’s definitely worth checking out CB1’s calendar. It may not be have the instant buzz of a spoken-word event, or a slam, but CB1 has something you don’t often get in Cambridge: most of the people aren’t there just to be seen, they’re there for the poetry.

You can find more about CB1 Poetry on their website at http://www.cb1poetry.org.uk/

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Word Wrestling Federation Presents: Page Match 2

In Performance Poetry on March 2, 2012 at 2:00 am

@ The Camden Roundhouse, 25/02/201

- reviewed by James Webster -

The Concept: An odd mix? 

Performance poetry and professional wrestling seems like an odd mix. On the one hand there’s the machismo, violence and soap-opera of pro wrestling and on the other the more reflective, cerebral and verbal poetry.

But in organising this event Dan Cockrill drew on the similarities between the two: larger than life personalities, crafting narratives, the showmanship and performance, audience interaction, and the competition of both poetry slams and wrestling matches. Thus the pomp and aggression of wrestling is introduced to the wit and meaning of poetry: culminating in Page Match 2 (a nice pun on the pro wrestling ‘cage match’) a verbal battle royalé between seven of London’s top poetry collectives.

The Match-Ups:

Round 1: Apples and Snakes vs. Word of Mouth

Winner: Apples and Snakes

Round 2: Roundhouse vs. Rubix

Winner: Rubix

Round 3: Bang! Said the Gun vs. Chill Pill vs. Dirty Hands

Winner: Chill Pill

Round 4: Rubix vs. Chill Pill vs. Apples and Snakes

Winner: Tie between Chill Pill and Apples and Snakes

Round 5: Poets Against Page Match vs. Apples and Snakes vs. Chill Pill

Winner: Apples and Snakes

It certainly built up a lot of hype.

  • The build-up and promotion was excellent. A series of verbal battles and trash-talking on facebook drummed up tension, while a series of amusing youtube videos by the collective PAP (Poets Against Page Match) created a villainous cabal of poets set on ruining the event. This created a classic wrestling narrative, that of the ‘heel’ (short for boot-heel), the bad guys that the audience and other poets can unite against.
  • This clearly worked: it was sold out. The audience packed into the Roundhouse in Camden (an appropriate cross between an underground bomb shelter and a gladiatorial ring) waiting for Page Match 2 to begin, to see if the hype would pay off.

It did fulfil the hype! (mostly)

  • As both a pro wrestling and a poetry fan I was impressed with how the pageantry of wrestling was mixed with the wit and verbal wizardry of poetry. Hosted by Dan Cockrill‘s Rhyme Stone Cowboy persona, he introduced each collective to entrances complete with lighting effects and music, some really impressive trash talking, some great costumes, and lots of vibrant characters.
  • The best entrances: Dirty Hands, made their entrance in demurely hipster-ish glasses to Christina Aguilera’s ‘Dirty’, Word of Mouth were all street with masks and hoodies, Apples and Snakes used confetti and party poppers, and Bang! Said the Gun’s Rob Auton entered to White Stripes’ ‘Little Room’ wearing a giant robot costume.
  • I was wowed by the battle between Apples and Snakes and Word of Mouth with their imaginative insults and ‘street vs. classics’ theme. Especially Angry Sam/The Dalston Destroyer’s piece with poetical put-downs and clever, and had powerful points on the best poetry coming from the ‘street’. And Poet Curious’s smooth rhyme and slick, plentiful art analogies that created a classical-art-street-chic vibe.
  • Dan Simpson/The Dandelion’s response to the ‘uncultured swine’ was clever and creative in his trash-talk and consummately performed, but it lacked the focus and convincing arguments of Word of Mouth. But he did still win.
  • Other highlights were Roundhouse member Jessica Green’s firebrand, entertaining performance on societal pressure on women who choose to enjoy ‘cider, spliffs and casual sex’ rather than having kids. Brave, bold and powerful.
  • And ‘Notorious’ Mr Gee (of Chill Pill): his poems on body image, hoodies, and a battle-style poem written for the event were funny, poignant and relevant and they propelled him like a one-man rocket into the final.

But some aspects of the night had room for improvement …

  • First off: the round pairings. Roughly organised by theme, with classic vs. street, old vs. new and then the themes kind of petered out, making the third round feel a bit redundant.
  • Rubix vs. Roundhouse was a poorly planned round; their poetry styles were painfully similar (Rubix are former Roundhouse poets themselves), and as there were four members of each collective each doing a long poem it felt like it went on forever
  • And throughout both collectives I had the same problems with many performers: their poems, while in places strong (especially Jackomo Rook’s piece on his father and Talia Randal’s ‘Chicken Bones’ on London and her family history) they often lacked focus, switched randomly between themes and almost all went on too long.
  • I was slightly disappointed by the usually excellent Dirty Hands and Bang! Said the Gun collectives. Bang’s Rob Auton/The Ultimate Worrier was funny, but he relied on one pseudo-pun and had no deeper meaning; while he’s good enough to rely solely on his delivery, he’s far better when he brings some substance.
  • While Katie Bonna and Amy Acre of the Hands’ interlinked poem was immaculately performed, and was full of lovely character and moving imagery, but their linking themes diverged more and more as the poems went on.
  • The gatecrash appearance from Poets Against Page Match/PAP, while amusing and appropriate to the wrestling theme, went on far too long and wasn’t clear enough to the audience members who hadn’t seen their youtube videos.
  • Their appearance in the final Belt vs Masks match was anticlimactic as when they were unmasked to reveal Peter Hayhoe (of Bang! Said the Gun and Dirty Hands) and Paul Cree (of Rubix) absolutely nothing was made of it.

And some aspects just didn’t work for me.

Such as the scoring. Scores were assigned by the judges anonymously, which missed a huge opportunity getting the audience involved booing or cheering the judges’ decisions (a staple of both wrestling and poetry slams).

And the lack of clarity as to how rounds were scored, coupled with the scorer admitting they might be making mistakes, meant the overall results seemed less than 100% (which comments from judge Charlie Dark ‘The Invader’ would seem to support).

Martin Galton disappointed with a poem about how the world is so depressing you should ‘blow your brains out’. I found this refrain more offensive than amusing, as I don’t think suicide’s all that funny (admittedly sections of the audience disagreed).

Rachel Pantechnicon is a veteran on the performance scene who’s quick with a pun and a joke, but I just feel they could do more with their act than elaborate puns. Dan Simpson, to my mind, carried the Apples and Snakes team to victory.

And Justice Lyric (of Rubix) had some great phrasing, but the premises of her two poems (one using poetic terms as innuendo and the other using dubstep/dancing as innuendo) made some effective wordplay seem trite and, with the ‘I’d go gay for poetry’ theme of her first piece, insipid.

A strong, fun night, with some flaws.

It was an entertaining evening, the success of the premise definitely overcoming the format and some performers’ shortfalls. The most entertaining were performers like Word of Mouth, ‘Notorious’ Mr Gee and Dan Simpson all wrote poems especially for the event that mixed trash-talk with affecting poetry. They, coupled with the superb showmanship of a wrestling event, made Page Match 2 stand out. Just not as much as it could have.

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N.O.N.C.E. – Steve Larkin

In Performance Poetry on February 27, 2012 at 5:45 pm

@ The North Wall Arts Centre, Oxford

- reviewed by Paul Askew -

The Performer: Steve Larkin is a bit of a legend of the Oxford poetry scene.

In fact, some would say he’s the reason Oxford has a poetry scene.

He set up and ran the infamous Hammer & Tongue night, which has now spread to other cities too, for eight years before backing down to concentrate on his own thing. His own thing being his new one man show, N.O.N.C.E.

If the title seems a little confrontational that’s because it’s meant to be. Steve’s never been one to shy away from politics in his poetry, so a show about the year he spent as poet in residence at a prison was certainly going to be no exception.

The Concept: a one-man show?

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking. Yes, we’ve all seen the art of the one man/modern theatre show parodied so well on Spaced, The Big Lebowski, Family Guy, etc etc. Small theatre shows are generally treated with the same sense of general disdain as self published poetry pamphlets, possibly even more so, so it’s difficult not to approach this without some sense of caution. I’ve seen Steve Larkin perform poetry before, I know how good he is, but a one man theatre show? Really? Yes. Really.

The Show: Spoiler alert:  This show isn’t just good, it’s really bloody good.

The basic storyline is that Steve and a Doctor (whose name I’m afraid I forgot to note) regularly go to HM Grendon to run a poetry workshop for the inmates. At first it appears to be met with a lack of enthusiasm, but as the prisoners who sign up get more into the course, the more the worth of what they’re doing seems. This rise in professional success is offset by a deterioration of Steve’s personal life, creating an interesting dynamic. I’m reluctant to go into much more detail, as the show’s reveals deserve to be kept as such.

The Performance: Steve Larkin is a warm and very engaging performer

It’s what made him such a good Hammer & Tongue host, so as he (and I’m loathe to use this phrase, but it really does describe it best) takes you on a journey through his year long placement, you go right along with him. It feels like he is talking to you, rather than at you (which in a full theatre is no easy feat). This presentation style is one of the main reasons why N.O.N.C.E. works as well as it does. It is never preachy, hectoring, judgmental or manipulative. Steve Larkin has the faith to just present his events and let the power of what’s happening be what affects us.

One of the other main reasons that N.O.N.C.E. succeeds as it does is by repeatedly taking you through Steve’s daily routine. This repetition is a clever trick, setting a framework for us to become quickly familiar with. It puts us in his place. He gets up, goes to work, certain same things happen, he leaves, stays in a B&B, calls his girlfriend, sleeps and dreams. By following this repeated routine, the changes are more highlighted and affecting. We are shown how Steve’s progress with the prisoners was slow to start, and each ‘Eureka’ moment makes us take more notice of it, because it’s outside of the framework. It’s unexpected.

The Prisoners: These people are people

A large part of the show deals with the interactions between the prisoners and a group of students that Steve is teaching in another job. The bringing together of these groups highlights a slight paradox in the way that the prisoners are taught and treated. These people are people, and when treated as such respond in positive ways and progress is made. Because they are people who’ve committed awful crimes though, they are never to be fully trusted. The interactions with the students highlight this conflict well, and it is a conflict that is never fully resolved.

There are a couple of uneasy moments in the Steve’s personal life side of the show, which serve to highlight how easy it could be for any of us to make an error of judgement and end up in the prisoners’ situation ourselves. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to think that you could, in one simple, unthinking moment, end up in the same position as someone in HM Grendon.

This is something we haven’t been given a chance to think about before. All the inmates who take part in the workshop are given the names of their heroes. This is said to be to enable them to loosen up and engage in the program, but I suspect it was also done in order to separate each person from their crime, so that by detaching them from what they’ve done they’ve done, they could see them as people rather than monsters. It works for the show too, as that’s the effect it has on the audience. It’s a lot easier for us to root for someone called David Bowie, say, than someone we know as a convicted murderer. It’s another little trick that really works in getting us involved in and sympathetic to the events of the show.

Conclusion: Moving, thought-provoking, superb theatre.

The ending of the show is superb. Again, I am reluctant to give too much away, but a couple of points are raised which confront us with our general perceptions and habits (both of which, I have to admit, I was guilty of), and this highlights another message of the show. We all have preconceptions, and these can often do a disservice to the people we have them of.

For all the uncomfortable moments and uneasy feelings we are given though, N.O.N.C.E. is in the end an affirming and uplifting show. Its messages are positive ones, and they are delivered in a way that makes you think about them long after the show is over.

Steve Larkin has created a moving, thought provoking, and, most importantly, a fantastic piece of theatre. I would highly recommend this show to anyone who has a chance to see it.

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Poetry Jam @ The Tea Box 13/01/2012

In Performance Poetry on February 26, 2012 at 12:26 am

- reviewed by Claudia Haberberg -

By the time I arrive at the Poetry Jam, the Tea Box is already full to bursting. Had my friend not arrived some time before me, I wouldn’t be able to sit down. The organisers – Anna Le and Amy Acre, of the equally popular Sage & Time – seem surprised and delighted in equal measure by the event’s evident success. With the mix-and-match antique aesthetic of the venue, the breathless excitement of the hosts, and the occasional delays as poets clamber over each other in order to reach the microphone, the atmosphere of the event can be best described as adorably shambolic.

The Poetry Jam plays host to a rich variety of poets, from the completely uninitiated (such as John, who has never read at an event before and brings us a collection of lunch hour limericks), to spoken word veterans such as Peter Hayhoe and tonight’s featured poet, Niall O’Sullivan, who runs Poetry Unplugged at the world famous Poetry Café.

  • O’Sullivan brings us excerpts from his most recent endeavour, The Mundane Comedy, written in terza rima and modelled on Dante’s Divine Comedy. The title says it all. O’Sullivan covers racism, class prejudice, open mic night culture and the Star Wars franchise with his characteristic brand of world-weary sardonicism that can, when mustered, pack a powerful punch. The Star Wars poem may have been ill-judged for a middle class, largely middle aged audience of poets, but the geekier, pop-culturally aware among us certainly enjoyed its forays into meme. He maintains that the greatest weapon against prejudice is humour. This might be subject to debate, but it certainly makes for an entertaining set.
  • The evening had an unofficial theme of specular poems, a form which Amy Acre uses to great effect in The Ends of the Earth. The first stanza paints a portrait of an ordinary Nepalese woman – whom Acre met whilst travelling – and the second turns it, both literally and figuratively, on its head. Acre’s flawless delivery, the rich colours and deep brush-strokes with which she paints, and her thorough grasp of form make this poem deeply compelling and a joy to hear.
  • Vanessa, we’re told, has come up from Bristol to be with us tonight, and I hope her journey was as worthwhile for her as it is for the audience. Her poem, Strawberries, is an achingly beautiful, sweetly nostalgic, charmingly awkward and very funny vignette of first love, centring around the taste of strawberries, the heat of the summer, and the differences between Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin. [I believe this is Bristol-based poet Vanessa Kisuule, ed.]

The evening also brings us a promising young poet in the form of Ameen Outspoken, who reads I Know Nothing, a thoughtful elegy on learning, reading and politics. His smooth delivery, pulsing rhythm, and engaging subject matter make him one to watch for future events.

We are also treated to a promising older poet, Terry, to whom age has brought cynicism and wit in equal measure. He is great fun, with subject matter ranging from doctors humouring their older patients to a workaday romance.

Peter Hayhoe is the final poet of the evening. Sabotage has not been recalcitrant in his praise in the past, and this review is no exception. He presented us with a poem, freshly written that day, about a festival romance. He juxtaposes the mundane (the morning after the night before) and the magical (emotions soaring as new love begins), the joyous (the experience of live music) and the grotesque (festival toilets), to form a funny, charming and engrossing whole. It gave the night its perfect cadence.

An open mic night is always hit-and-miss, and Poetry Jam is no exception. We hear the clumsily rhymed, curmudgeonly first world problems of Julia and Jan, and MC Little Mo and Edward Unique have little more than misogyny to offer. But the best poets of the evening are more than capable of eclipsing them, and I leave with a smile on my face and tea in my belly.

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