Reviews of the Ephemeral

Posts Tagged ‘Paul Askew’

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Review: Sadcore Dadwave (Not the Oxford Literary Festival) 20/03/13

In Performance Poetry on April 23, 2013 at 9:30 am

dadwave

-reviewed by James Webster -

The Event

Sadcore Dadwave is a night I was hugely intrigued by; with a really cool line-up, a bafflingly unspecific name and mission statement, and a spot in the always impressive Not the Oxford Literary Festival. Spawned from the minds of Sian S. Rathore and Paul Askew, this night was part of the performance facet of Sadcore Dadwave, an organisation that also encompasses an e-zine and seems to have a strong focus on transgressive and alternative literature. These genres both seem to have a focus on pushing at the barriers of genre, crossing lines of convention and style, and it was perhaps appropriate then that my reaction to the night was split. Indeed, looking back at it in different ways gives an impression of two different events, one hugely enjoyable and the other … not so much.

The Positive View

An immense evening with a series of thoughtful, funny and frankly fascinating performers, all ably spliced together by our two hosting ‘dads’, Sian and Paul, who used the device of being our theoretical parents to clever comic effect.

Sian opened with ‘We Are All Anagrams of Something Else Entirely’, which won me over with its fun overarching anarchic imagery tied together by the poet’s playful way with words. Her twin pieces ‘I’m So Miserable’ and ‘I’m So Jacked’ were both hilarious in their exaggerated misery/cheerful mania, listing with a whimsical joy the ways in which she’s so miserable/jacked (“I’m so jacked I fucked Lord Byron to death!”).

Paul brought his usual blend of thoughtfully amusing absurdity with the damaged, darkly sweet and beautiful ‘Battlefields’, while his ‘Holiday’ began as basic comic satire of holiday-makers (“let’s get refused service in pubs and bars”), but evolved into an insightful and laugh-rousing piece on the idea of holiday itself (“let’s declare war on our home towns”).

Emily Harrison gave a set with a clarity of expression that many other poets would be envious of, while also offering up some really powerful imagery and imaginative ideas. Particular highlights were her raw and visceral piece on Mark Quinn’s ‘Self’, her ‘Making John Lennon Cum’ with its playful visuals and the way it interacted with a public entity on an intimate and personal level, and the brief and adorably bittersweet ‘Taxidermy’.

Diane Marie‘s extracts from her e-book ‘I Wrote a Poem Dedicated to God that I Considered to be Extremely Disrespectful’ were way cool. I really loved the way she painted scenes with her words, layering them part by part, building meaning through repetition and gradual change. It seemed she was giving us fragmentary extracts from a whole that also appears to be made up of interlocking fragments, a kind of study/deconstruction of words, jokes and typeset.

Luke Kennard‘s feature set was a phenomenon of super-clever satire, blended with his own uniquely creative way with words to create an ice-cool set. Old favourite ‘The Murderer’ is a nice take on how the rehabilitation process can be subverted by constant reminders and cultural demonisation (presented with amped up amusement). ‘Leatherbound Road’ was a sweet and unique twist on a love poem, viewing emotion only through reference and analogy. And his big set piece ‘Insufferably Upbeat Spies’ deconstructed the various clichés, tropes and annoying cocky-cheerfulness of spy shows with great aplomb and a surprisingly tight plot. He made superb use of comic exaggeration with spies chirping things like “being a spy is just so wonderful I could burst into animated stars” and a villain known as “the Heart-fucker” who pretty much does what it says on the tin …

And in the open mic Lucy Ayrton‘s ‘Bonfire Juice’ was at its usual nostalgic and heartbreaking best, Joe Briggs‘s lecture-cum-anecdote-cum-poem on punk music painted a rich and spiky smorgasboard of anarchic ridiculosity, Lysander fit some big words and ideas into a rapid-fire political rap, Molly Arenberg gave an extremely affecting piece addressed to her girlfriend’s parents that had some very powerful things to say on gay acceptance, and George Chopping gave his social-awkwardness-as-comic-performance turn that always works well for him.

All in all, a night of intelligent, thoughtful and often gut-bustingly funny poetry, which walked the fine line between clever confidence and arrogance with the poise of a tightrope walker.

The Negative View

A clumsily organised event (the hosts were 20 minutes late) that always felt just a bit too pleased with how clever it was being, this night had the feeling of an in-joke that I was being judged for not getting. The somewhat exclusory atmosphere of the evening was not helped by the specious nature of what ‘Sadcore Dadwave‘ actually is, or what it’s mission statement and intent are as regards the kind of poetry they’re trying to promote, which didn’t stop them from policing the open mic and forbidding some poets to perform, because they didn’t fit the ‘feel’.

Sian‘s ‘We Are All Anagrams of Something Else Entirely’ had some fun and anarchic overarching imagery, but it didn’t do enough for me to tie together the otherwise massively disparate nature of the poem. While her two list-style pieces ‘I’m So Jacked’ and ‘I’m So Miserable’ seemed lazy in their formats and, while funny and original, effectively repeated the same joke over and over again, as if hammering you over the head with how good said joke was.

While ‘Battlefields’ and ‘Holiday’ were solid pieces, the latter started off as disappointingly 1-dimensional and Paul sacrificed his usually thoughtful and nuanced performance of ‘The Life and History of Paul Askew in 5 Dream Sequences’ in order to emphasise the comedy, which robbed the poem of some of its depth.

Emily Harrison‘s poems, while occasionally powerful and imaginative, tended towards over-explaining, which made her overall style seem clunky and could lead to some poems coming across as forced and obvious. I can’t help but feel her genuinely interesting ideas and engaging imagery may have been better served by suggesting more and explaining less, giving the audience more to sink their imaginative teeth into.

The fragmented nature of Diane Marie‘s work, by contrast, could be seen as having the opposite problem, as it could be said to have lacked focus and drive. While the individual images were gorgeous, they did not always succeed in suggesting a connecting theme or narrative and perhaps her work did not lend itself perfectly to performance.

Luke Kennard‘s performance, for all its wit and mammoth intelligence (or perhaps because of it), seemed smug in the extreme. His piece on tabloid journalism was expertly constructed, but seemed too pleased with itself in its almost vindictive humour. ‘Insufferably Upbeat Spies’ suffered from the same problem, its hilarious deconstruction of the spy genre becoming increasingly repetitive and seeming to revel in its own cleverness. “The Heart-fucker” was possible the best example of this, for in his exaggeration/satire of the negative stereotypes that spy/crime shows indulge in with their villains, Kennard seemed to indulge his cleverness to the point of obnoxiousness, which undermined the satire.

And in the open mic Lysander‘s delivery was monotonous, his politics undeveloped and obvious, and his lyrics unimaginative. Molly Arenberg‘s poem, for all her clear emotion and moving subject matter, was over-long and perhaps needed more artful language and expression, while it could have done without the artificial-seeming actions. Joe Briggs‘s punk elegy was more of a list than poem and lacked any more coherent message than ‘punk is pretty cool’. While George Chopping‘s absurdly long intro was embarrassingly awkward and rambling, while his poetry was amusing, but somewhat trite.

Overall this event was smug, exclusive and pretentious. While a lot of the material was very good and very funny, there was too much of sense that people were only trying to entertain themselves which came across as masturbatory. Not that I have a problem with masturbation (literary or otherwise), but often these things are more fun when they’re a more collaborative effort …

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Review: Hammer & Tongue Oxford Slam Final 12/06/2012

In Performance Poetry on July 2, 2012 at 3:32 pm

- reviewed by Neil Anderson -

Sabotage recently previewed the Hammer & Tongue Oxford final, and to follow up from that, Neil Anderson reviews the final itself!

Oxford’s Skylight Crisis cafe was packed to an extent I’d never before witnessed for the 2012 Oxford Hammer and Tongue final. This was the second Hammer and Tongue event I’ve attended, and perhaps oddly, the second time I’ve been handed a judge’s score book, on this occasion at least, according to host Tina Sederholm, because I’m “not swayed by the crowd.”

The Hosts – On the Road to Edinburgh

Tina Sederholm and co-host Lucy Ayrton moved things along briskly, keeping us entertained with their bickering. They opened proceedings with previews from their forthcoming shows. Tina invited us to ‘consider the cupcake’ (from her upcoming Edinburgh show ‘Eve and the Perfect Cupcake’), and her cries of ‘lick me!’ typify Tina’s naughty but nice approach to her craft. She really is my favourite flirtatious auntie and while she forgot the words to her piece a few times, she did so with a self-deprecating charm that took the pressure off of other performers.

Lucy’s ‘Let me be Lost’, from her forthcoming Edinburgh show ‘Lullabies to make your children cry’, was just mesmerising. Paul ‘Should have been a final contender’ Fitchett, explained it was about ‘not following the trail of breadcrumbs, but still wanting to know where it leads’ and I wish I could tell you more, but to be honest, I just sat there spellbound by one of Oxford’s most heart-breakingly gifted poets. So, just go and see her (and Tina) on 12th July at the Old Fire Station.

The Final! An epic battle of words, politics, rhyme and comedy:

Lucy and Tina retreated to the wings and the competition began. First on was Pete The Temp (whose one-man show Pete the Temp vs Climate Change was recently reviewed on Sabotage), who I once saw read a wonderfully theatrical piece about North Sea Oil called “YOU rely on ME!’”, after which, he insisted everyone raise their hands and stamp their feet in a cringe fest called ‘Angry Pedestrian’ whereupon I walked out. Guess which piece he performed tonight? He began with the ‘David Cameron’ rap, confirming his talent for mimicry, but repeated ‘Eton homey’ allusions (while garnering nuclear blasts of laughter from the audience) were as predictable as the right-on buttons being pushed. And when it came to his pedestrian rant, his rhythmical verbal quickness and talent for getting the audience involved won him points, but I just sat there exasperated.

Paul Askew meandered on next. The self-styled sex symbol of Oxford poetry offered the night’s riskiest moments with ‘Three Times a Lady”: ‘I remember, the first time I fell in love with you/ … you were getting that treatment thing/where the little fish eat the dead skin off your feet/Your face looked like you were having a dildo slowly/inserted into your vagina/and I thought, “I wish that dildo was my penis.”/ Paul’s sex symbol status hung in the balance, but his self-deprecatory style eventually won over the doubters with this deadpan and humorous tale. The follow up, ‘Catastrophe Cafe, took longer to get going, relying on absurdist dialogue exchanges for momentum, and only really half making its point by the end (personally I think this is one of the most beautiful, funny and poignant poems I’ve heard – Ed).

Next up was Aubrey Mvula. His first poem, ‘I am African’ slammed media reporting of the continent exclusively in terms of disaster. Effective parody, but lines like ‘the rivers of the mighty Nile flow deep within.’ and ‘my pride stands tall as the mighty baobab tree’, while it was a powerful message of reclamation, it risked offering an image as one-dimensional as the colonial attitudes being parodied. His second piece, about child sexual abuse was more earnest, but perhaps not that controversial (the 6.9 I gave him, though, seemed to be).

Moving from the worthy to the whimsical, we had the poetic maelstrom that is Anna McCrory. She delivered a thumping version of her high street shopping fable ‘The Wizard of Argos’, and an equally enthusiastic follow-up about the let-down factor inherent in feel-good movies. It was a slightly stop-start affair, with Anna pausing several times to retrieve her lines from the back of the stage and even leaping onto a chair at one point, but by the time she’d finally got hold of the plot, the laughs came slick and fast, and we were whooping along like characters in some corny Richard Curtis extravaganza.

After Anna’s flights of fancy, Davy Mac gave us a decidedly un-rose-tinted glimpse of reality. Ex merchant navy, big issue seller and as scouse as they come, Davy sets his stall out for society’s have-nots. His poetic schemes aren’t the greatest I’m sure he’d admit – knowing where the rhyme’s going to fall in each line puts a hell of lot of stress on the vocabulary to deliver. And mixing things up by throwing in a rap did little to alter the predictable format, even if it did get the crowd on his side. And his tale of homosexual encounters during his time in the forces was heartfelt and poignant. I enjoyed his set, but more in spite of the polemics than due to them.

About as far away from homeless ex-sailors as you might care to position yourself stood Mark Niel. I wondered for a moment what Mark was doing here. Consciously and unapologetically middle-class and giggling like a suburban scoutmaster entertaining the troop, I feared he was in for a judicial pasting. Nevertheless, by the time he’d nailed Iams cat food and poetry in ‘my cat’s an Iambic cat,’ and delivered a wonderfully valedictory tale of first love with ‘Sweet 16’, the camp was well and truly on fire.

Dan Holloway is a talented writer and his early forays into poetry held promise. But, in Sabotage’s opinion, his attempts in previous performances to adopt an overtly ‘slam-rap’ style caused his delivery to seem over-performed. Dan throttled back the performance in ‘Mentalist’, his assault against mental health service cutbacks, allowing the poetry room to breathe, before building the pace towards the end with a rising sense of panic. ‘Hungerford Bridge’ meanwhile offered another tour of the seedy city underbelly that Dan’s so fascinated by, but is perhaps less convincing in a slam format then some of his other pieces.

And finally, to Neil Spokes, Oxfordshire pub landlord and I have to say it, Vic Reeves lookalike. And his first piece sounded a bit like Shooting Stars meets Splodgenessabounds, Neil roaring “Pint of Fosters and Errrrrrrrrr…’ followed by a list of your average Brit lout’s Top 10 tipples. It was cathartic no doubt, but in need of some polishing. He continued the weekend party theme with the more sobering ‘Neretva’, set against the shelling of Mostar. It didn’t quite hit the mark as, unlike his opener, Neil seemed slightly too removed from events.

The Dramatic Conclusion

Finally, for those who care to know: the three highest scorers were Dan Holloway, Davy Mac and Pete the Temp. Pete and Davy were called back for a final head to head and Davy, by now on his last legs, eventually won through, perhaps because, while the audience clearly admired Pete, it was Davy who gained their affection and respect.

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Preview: Hammer & Tongue Oxford 2012 Final

In End of year round-up, Performance Poetry on June 11, 2012 at 3:29 pm

-preview by James Webster-

This coming Tuesday the 12th of June sees the culmination of another year of Hammer & Tongue: Oxford with their Slam Final, pitting the winners of all 7 of this year’s heats against each other. Champion will slam against champion in an intriguing mix of established veterans and up-and-comers, youth and experience, with only one winner able to go on to the National Final (which if it is anything as exciting as this year’s finals at the Walton Music Hall, will be very special indeed).

As an added point of interest the winners will also be joined at this slam by the ‘Best of the Rest’, as the H&T team put all the runners up from this year into an online vote, allowing public opinion to decide which poet would take the ‘Wildcard’ spot in the final. After a close-run vote Neil Spokes emerged the victor!

With less than two days to go until the slam itself, Sabotage takes a look at each of the poets who will take to the stage to try and claim their spot in the national final.

October: Paul Askew

The self-styled ‘Official Sex Symbol of Oxford Poetry’, Paul booked the first place in the final by winning against stiff competition at the H&T February heat at Turl Street Kitchen (an event that included fellow finalist Anna Macrory as one of the feature poets and was headlined by Henry Bowers). Sabotage have reviewed Paul several times since, and if anything his comically surreal (and often surprising perceptive) poetry has improved. Askew’s more recent pieces like ‘Chaos Café’ and ‘The Extremely Abridged History of Paul Askew in 5 Dream Sequences’ have remained funny, while showing considerable depth and a talent for performance. Paul also edits the Ferment magazine.

Biggest Strength: his capability for blending humour and pathos, with an extremely original and absurdist voice.

Weakness?: his surrealism, while excellent, may not be for everyone, and he often reads his poems off the page, which usually hinders slam performance. But Askew is nothing if not a bucker of trends.

November: Pete the Temp

Pete the Temp should be known to most spoken word fans. A veteran of Hammer & Tongue he’s a former H&T National Slam champion (2009), and his funny, political, exceptionally performed works have wowed audiences all over the country at all kinds of poetry events and festivals. Boasting an easy and engaging stage presence, and a wealth of material (his ode to pedestrians and piece about working in a charity call centre always go down well), he has also just debuted his one-man show “Pete the Temp versus Climate Change” (soon to be reviewed on Sabotage).

Biggest Strength: performance experience. As well as having a way with audiences honed over years of gigging, he knows what it takes to win a slam and could easily do it again.

Weakness?: motivation. Having gone all the way before, and with the one-man show to concentrate on, he might just not want it as much as the other slammers, which could hinder his performance.

December: Aubrey Mvula

Sabotage have only seen him perform once. As a virtual unknown, he came out of nowhere to deliver an intensely moving poem about abuse and vulnerability, his understatedly powerful performance stunning the audience into silence. He won the slam (from a difficult early slot) and is possibly more of a wildcard in this slam than the actual ‘Wildcard’ Neil Spokes.

Biggest Strength: the power and clear emotion of his poetry.

Weakness?: from what we saw in December, he doesn’t lean towards comedy, and comic poems tend to win more often than not.

February: Davy Mac

Mac won the Valentine’s Day Slam with a funny and socially relevant poem about homosexuality and ‘Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell’ attitudes in the military. Having seen him perform several times now he’s got a range of poems about powerful issues that are always well expressed and often have a strong grasp of comic timing. His subject matter, while brave and always interesting, doesn’t always carry his audience with him, as his poem at the last H&T event (an odd mixture of juvenile fart jokes and creationism) demonstrated. But he maintains a talent for tackling bold issues clearly, boldly, and often with surprising beauty.

Biggest Strength: the strength of his beliefs that comes across in his poetry.

Weakness?: some of those beliefs may not take the audience with him.

March: Dan Holloway

Another poet that Sabotage have known and admired for a while, Dan runs Eight Cuts (Oxford multi-discipline arts organisation), organises gigs with a collective of poets known as the New Libertines, was the mastermind behind the Not the Oxford Literary Festival in March, and has just released a collection ‘Last Man out of Eden’ (soon to be reviewed on Sabotage). While his intricately constructed poems don’t always play well at slams, he crafts beautifully haunting images like few other poets I’ve seen. He also has a talent for social and political subject matter, pieces like ‘Mentalist’ and ‘Monsters’ tackle issues of riots, workfare schemes and mental health in original and intelligent manner (without ever descending into rhyming rants as some poets might).

Biggest Strength: the way in which he uses rhyme to flow seamlessly and quickly between his striking imagery.

Weakness?: honestly he has a tendency to over-perform his poems, as if trying to adopt a ‘slam style’, making the emotion and imagery seem a little forced.

April: Mark Niel

Another seasoned spoken word performer, he’s won a clutch of slams (he appeared in the H&T National Final this year) and always goes down a storm with audiences. He’s the epitome of the comic poet: voice, structure, body language and writing all leading towards the inevitable punchline. While it could be argued that doing so comes at the expense of meaning, it cannot be said that he doesn’t do it well; his poems have been greeted with big laughs every time I’ve seen him perform. But for me his poems sacrifice too much for the laugh, even their own internal logic lost to the funny (such as a comic poem about poets who perform in silly voices, delivered entirely in a silly voice and only enjoyable for that reason).

Biggest Strength: his aptitude for comedy, which almost always wins over the audience.

Weakness?: the nagging feeling that every one of his poems is fundamentally the same kind of joke, always delivered in the same way, which may hamper him when performing multiple pieces.

May: Anna McCrory

President of OUPS (Oxford University Poetry Society), Anna has performed aroundOxford,ManchesterandLondonand she organises a bunch of events too. She writes poems that are rich in whimsy and comedy, inviting the audience into her own charming world in which geeks rock out (in the library), children rap andArgoshas its very own wizard. While her material might come off as trite in the hands of a lesser poet, it’s her warmth as a performer and perceptiveness as a writer that make her poems more than just rhyming stand-up.

Biggest Strength: her easygoing and geeky performance.

Weakness?: perhaps a lack of the weighty themes that tend to garner high scores in slam.

Wildcard: Neil Spokes

Spokes performed strongly at two different H&T slams this year (coming second and third), which was enough to get him through to the Wildcard round and win his place in the final. His poetry when Sabotage has seen him has been strong, with a real aptitude for the slightly comic slam style. At best his poetry has been funny and adorably sweet, and even his poem about dropping his phone down the toilet was funny, if not especially deep (unless it was a really deep toilet).

Biggest Strength: his humour and sweetness.

Weakness?: toilet humour may not always go down well.

Conclusion: honestly with a real mix of styles and experiences, it seems to Sabotage that anyone could win. But regardless of who actually emerges victorious, we’re pretty sure after a night of excellent poetry it’ll be the audience who feel like champions.

Hammer & Tongue Oxford 2012 Final: Tuesday 12th May, 8pm, The Old Fire Station

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Stoke Newington Literary Festival 2012

In All of the Above, Festival, Performance Poetry on June 5, 2012 at 1:39 pm

-Reviewed by Claire Trévien-

Now in its third year, Stoke Newington’s Literary Festival already has the reputation of an established festival while retaining a laid-back charm. Stoke Newington’s Town Hall and Library Gallery were the scenes of sold-out performances by John Cooper Clarke, Simon Day, Josie Long and Wilko Johnson. Pauline Black, introduced by a poetry reading by Ashna Sarkar, was a highlight amongst these headliners. The ex-lead singer of The Selecter read from her autobiography and gave a moving account of life as an adopted child in sixties England.

Pauline Black

A particular focus of this year’s festival, which fittingly ran during the Jubilee week-end, was on the importance of locality and identity. For instance, Simon Cole led festgoers on a Radical Stokey tour, arguing that it was a ‘village that changed the world’. John Rees and Lindsey German narrated a People’s History of London, while Pete Brown and Robin Turner appealed to our livers in their quest to define the perfect London pub. Taking a different approach, George Alagiah, Hattie Ellis and Dr Giles Oldroyd chaired a debate on local food versus global food, a gateway to discuss our 21st century extremes: obesity and famine.

Locality was also a useful banner under which to assemble writers, such as the Stoke Newington Poets which included poets Katy Evans-Bush and Peter Daniels. It was the opportunity too to flaunt the creation of the Hackney anthology Acquired for Development by…., a collection of fiction, non-fiction and poetry that attempts to capture the diversity of East London. The Morning Star’s Well Versed, the newspaper’s weekly poetry column, hosted two nights of deliciously foul-mouthed poetry at the Mascara Bar. Across the two nights it featured readings from the likes of Niall O’Sullivan, Tim Wells, Clare Pollard, Wayne Holloway-Smith, Sophie Cameron, and Amy Acre. It was a particular joy to hear O’Sullivan read from his Mundane Comedy project ‘Canto LXXI’, on a racist incident on the Victoria line diffused by other passengers:

‘And like that final scene in Sparticus
when all those faithful men stand up to cry

that it is their name too, other commuters
state other places where they play the drums
like Scotland, South Korea and Croatia,

and after each location named there comes
a louder round of chuckles til the man
that made the racist comment sits and squirm’

Wayne Holloway-Smith

The Mascara Bar garnered a reputation for being the space where headliners co-existed with everybody else in a happy drunken glaze. Notably, John Cooper Clarke turned up after performing at the Town Hall for an impromptu set, accompanied by Suzanne Moore. Another highlight of these performance medleys was Dan Holloway’s infamous troupe of New Libertines who performed in the paved basement of the White Rabbit on the Sunday. The said paving threatened the health of Paul Askew during the performance of his ‘The Extremely Abridged History, Present and Future of Paul Askew in Five Dream Scenes’, which involves a dramatic slump to the ground. Poetry ranged from the uproariously entertaining Hay Brunsdon and James Webster, to Dan Holloway’s haunting ‘Hungerford Bridge’ and Anna Percy’s foray into the darker side of the Beijing Olympics.

Irreverent and fuelled by gin (courtesy of Hendrick’s) the Stoke Newington Literary Festival is a love letter to its multi-cultural locality and is unafraid to put its writers and radical history in the foreground. At the same time, it has brought to Stoke Newington writers of international repute and favours an inclusive approach. It is this blend that makes one hope it will continue to be an integral part of the literary landscape for years to come.

, , , , , , , , , ,

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.

, ,

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.

, , , , , , , , ,

An Evening of Poetry and Music Visuals – by London Poetry Systems and Ferment

In Magazine, Performance Poetry on February 24, 2012 at 12:56 pm

@ The Albion Beatnik 28/01/2012

-reviewed by James Webster-

So I’m in the chaotically colourful, bustling and amazing bookshop that is the Albion Beatnik in Oxford and it’s very crowded and I am terrified of spilling my beer on a book. Here, London Poetry System have teamed up with Ferment ‘zine to deliver an evening of ‘cross media poetry’ which can apparently be translated as ‘poetry with technical hitches’, and aside from my fears of beer/book-related accidents, I’m having a whale of a time.

  • It’s hosted by George Topping, who has a flustered energy and likability, kind of channeling a Matt Smith vibe. He kept things moving smoothly, and was entertainingly cheeky towards latecomers.
  • He warms us up with ‘Love-Knot’ about warmth on a boat. It’s filled with amusingly dreadful puns (he’s ‘not a monogamist’, but a ‘mahoganist’) and funnily clunky rhymes.
  • The first feature is Lucy Ayrton, whose ‘Tarquin’ is the first multi-media poem of the night. And it sparkled, its twinkly and ominous backing music providing the perfect pitch to Ayrton’s cautionary tale of why you shouldn’t talk to strangers (especially if they’re demons). Tarquin makes an effective mixture smart-Alec and helpfulness, while the demon is coldly spiky in both description and dialogue. Combined with the music it makes for chilling listening.
  • Her other poems are full of slickly intricate rhymes, with a very natural delivery that belies her language’s complexity. She’s also very funny. ‘Fuck You Corporate-Land’ is an amazing performance of disappointment at the monotony of corporate environment (‘you’re disappointed? I was going to be the first ever brain surgeon/rock star’). And ‘I Don’t Hate Men, I Just Hate You’ is a highly amusing and perceptive piece on feminism and a certain kind of misogyny.
  • Then Paul Askew, the co-founder of Ferment (available on the night for the reduced price of £3) steps up to the plate.
  • He starts with this gem of an exchange with the audience:

Paul: “Can you hear me at the back?”

Audience Member: “No.”

Paul: “I suspect that was my mum, she likes to fuck with me.”

Audience Member: “Not literally …”

*Paul leaves, like, literally walks out the front door in a faux huff. The audience piss themselves laughing. Not literally.*

  • He does come back, treating us to some of his delectably surreal poetry.
  • He starts with some joke-poems about death, but he really gets going with a spectacularly meta acrostic about Oxford, that is about, um, trying to write an acrostic about Oxford with helpful hints (and eventually criticisms) from the city itself (‘I’VE GOT DREAMY SPIRES, LOOK AT ME!’). It’s also his poem from this issue of Ferment.
  • ‘The Time I Tried to Work in a Café’ is a showcase in using his absurdist tendencies to illustrate bizarre profundity. Describing the Chaos Café, a trendy student hangout, designed by the owner to be as anarchic as possible as she ‘loves chaos … want[s] to kiss its lips’. Balancing chaos against the shadow of perfection which is ‘hollow and so fragile you’re afraid to move’ Askew meditates on how lives court chaos, how they can embrace or control their own lack of control.
  • And he finishes with ‘The Crow’, a bit of a crowd favourite, with a nicely drawn character of the comic curmudgeonly crow and a funny situation that gives rise to an unlikely connection.
  • Next were two more multimedia poems, from LPS poets Jennie Cole and Jericho. Now, multimedia performance is a really exciting genre, and I’ve seen some really strong performances utilising video and sound, but both these poems came across as pretentious and inaccessible.
  • Jennie Cole’s ‘Cockaigne, A Pastoral’ shows us some interesting themes and phrases, but way too many of the lyrics were only vague poetical aphorisms and ultimately it’s too disconnected and oblique for me to connect with.
  • While Jericho’s ‘Vertigo’ feels like an über-pretentious fan video to Hitchcock’s Vertigo. It’s even more inaccessible and self-indulgent than ‘Cockaigne’.
  • Caroline Bird is next on, another poet who examines life through the lens of funny surrealism.
  • She treats us to a big mess of scare-stories, feelings and amusing randomness as she explains to us what’s happening ‘in every city of the world’. It’s all different aspects of city lives thrown onto the wall and somehow it all sticks.
  • ‘Our Lollypop Lady’ is not only a splendidly bizarre poem, but an excellent piece of common sense. Suggesting that relationships need an umpire she brings to life an ultra-fair character who ‘lives in the middle of the kitchen in a yellow tent’. It’s intelligently conceived and humorously realised.
  • While ‘Let the People Starve’ is on how love can make you stop caring about other things, taken to a ridiculous extreme (‘let’s … sink knives into everyone who said it wouldn’t last’).
  • ‘Pity the Female Casanova’ is very insightful on the falseness of adoration, while remaining impressively witty and ‘Facts’ gives us the facts around the edge of an experience; a poem coquettishly hinting and suggesting at a just perceived something.
  • Ross Sutherland, the final performer, gives us some more multimedia poetry with superb results.
  • Starting with an hilarious retelling of Little Red Riding Hood (that almost makes me snort beer out of my nose onto a nearby copy of The Forsythe Saga) with certain words replaced with the words 23 places below them in the dictionary, thus making the title ‘Liverish Red-Blooded Riff-Raff Hoo-ha’. It turned into a bizarrely coherent and political poem (‘Great Britain is illiberal and weaponless’ was a favourite) that was delivered with considerable verbal dexterity, while the accomplished video kept it grounded in the source material.
  • His ‘Experiment to Determine the Existence of Love’ is superbly sweet, with a perfectly pitched video. It recounts a date as a scientific experiment from hypothesis to conclusion. It mixes the science into the poetry seamlessly.
  • ‘Symphony’ is an amazing interactive poetry project: Ross wrote a poem, it was translated into different languages and various people playing the Hide and Seek weekender had to find people to translate it back. And Sutherland reads both his original poem and the resulting translated poem, both to the same elegant music and affecting video. Both poems are wonderful, steeped in the sounds and feelings of London, but the best bits are definitely where the translations differ massively and comically.
  • But by far Sutherland’s strongest poem in my eyes (and the strongest of the night) was an uproarious and poignant poem that worked as a meditation on death and the ‘trappings of grief’ while also perfectly describing the action of the opening credits of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air that played behind him. Flawlessly imagined and performed, it was equal parts heart-rending and heart-warming.

Summary

A very entertaining night that reflected very favourably on LPS, Ferment and the growing genre of multimedia spoken word, with only some inaccessible videos letting the side down. I recommend you check out LPS’s events and buy Ferment. Go do that now.

, , , , , , ,

Tongue Fu @ Rich Mix 12/01/2012

In Performance Poetry on January 28, 2012 at 5:12 pm

-reviewed by Paul Askew-

Tongue Fu‘s concept: Invite writers to perform with a live band improvising along.

I’ll admit I was somewhat dubious, as my only previous encounter of such a thing was on a late night BBC2 live jazz series in the mid 1990′s, when the presenter performed some “jazz poetry” while improvising with his piano trio. It was cringeworthy, and this is when I was a teenager, writing and enjoying cringeworthy poetry myself (come on, you all did that too, don’t pretend you didn’t), so for me to not like it then, it must’ve been REALLY bad.

And that was the image I had in my head when I tried to imagine what this gig was going to be like.

The noticeable and crucial thing though, the music worked.

(Here’s how they do it. Before each piece the performer has a brief chat with the band to tell them the themes, or what kind of thing they’d like the band to play. The musicians, clearly very competent improvisers, almost always end up playing something that fits what’s being performed.)

Tongue Fu is hosted by Chris Redmond, who started the night off with a “Prayer” poem that started in outer space and ended in the room we were in, hoping for the best from the night’s performers.

The First Half:

  •   Tim Clare. His first poem was about being drunk and trying to make people like you. It was a witty account of the kind of things we’ve all done when that boozed up little voice in your head says things like “Hey, you know what would be a great idea? Get your knob out and dip it in that guy’s pint. Yeah, that’ll impress them!” It was “Aren’t we all ridiculous,” rather than “Oh, woe is me,” which kept it funny.
  • He followed it with a poem about how we should all be kinder to ourselves that started off sounding like the Baz Luhrmann song “Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen,” but became more unhinged as it went on. This was cleverly mirrored by the music becoming looser and less structured, which shows how good Tongue Fu’s concept is when it gets it right.
  • Tongue Fu’s poet in residence, Shane Solanki was next. He did a fairly long retelling of the nativity that reminded me of John Lennon’s poetry, he took a familiar tale and replaced words for comic or political effect (the three wise men became women, Thursday became “Parklife by Blur-day,” etc.). It switched between being an amusing, modernised version of the familiar story, and an anti-war political commentary.
  • I have to say, if it hadn’t been for the accompanying music, I would’ve probably found it a tad annoying and a bit too long, but as Solanki wrote it specifically for this night, with the intention of it being set to music, it worked well. Another point scored for the Tongue Fu concept.
  • Malika Booker finished off the first half: her first, described as a “Homage to Brixton”, was a straightforward depiction of everyday city life with dub backing from the band. It sounded like a Linton Kwesi Johnson track, in a good way.
  • The next poems were tributes to her family. The first, a dream in which she performs with some dead relatives in the audience before they all have dinner together, was a tad clichéd for my liking (a flower is used as a metaphor for love, a knife as a metaphor for pain). The second, about trying to restore the faith an aunt has lost while in hospital, was far more original and interesting.

The Second Half:

  • Began with Chris Redmond doing a poem about the time he got his own poo in his eye. No, really. It was like a formal poetry version of a Judd Apatow film. It went down a storm.
  • Malika Booker returned with a poem about the strength of women through the generations of her family, and was the first rare instance of the music not working.
  • This was followed by a poem constructed of quotes from her mother. It did an old trick well: starting humorous before a well judged switch in tone, which led to a poignant ending.
  • Tim Clare came back with a poem/rant against teenagers, both now and when he was a teen.
  • Then the highlight of the night: a series of hip-hop verses as various famous women from history. It was very cleverly done and hilarious.
  • Last act of the night was Martin Shaw. A storyteller, rather than a poet, he finished the night off with an extended myth-like tale, which starts as a deal-with-the-devil story before following the daughter of said deal maker in some sort of I’ve-gone-mad-because-my-Dad-cut-my-hands-off-and-I’ve-lived-in-a-forrest-for-years-and-oh-look-a-king’s-going-to-fall-in-love-with-me. Then the king goes off to war, she has a baby, Devil comes back to shake things up, they separately end going to the same pub (years apart form each other, of course). Then they get married. Then her hands grow back.
  • (Then I bit my own hands off out of sheer boredom. Seriously. I’m typing this review with bleeding stumps, but it’s okay. I’ll just find a pub full of people from all the stories ever told in the world and then somehow they’ll just grow back. No biggie.)
  • This story should be rewritten as a novel. Or even a novella. Then there would be enough space to properly deal with everything that comes up. As it is, Martin tries to fit too much into too short a time and it comes across as scrappy and half baked. This wasn’t helped by him stopping the band every minute or so, which just served to highlight the lack of narrative flow.
  • It split opinion in the audience though. Some seemed to really enjoy it, some left while he’d been performing.

Overview

  • As Chris Redmond said at the beginning, the night itself is an experiment. And sadly, that means it won’t always work. On the whole, the night really won me over: the central idea of spoken word with live improv backing gave it a unique feel, and the charisma of the other performers had made it really fun. I would definitely say that this is a night worth going to.

, , , , , , , , ,

Hammer and Tongue Camden vs Oxford: Part 2, Oxford

In Performance Poetry on December 10, 2011 at 5:13 pm

11/10/11

@ Oxford Hub above Turl Street Kitchen

- by James Webster -

I have a fondness for Hammer and Tongue, their events were my first taste of performance poetry. Their slams running in 6 different locations provide a lot of people with similarly excellent introductions to poetry slams. So in October I was very happy to attend two H&T slams in two days in two different cities.

They were quite different, but drawn together by H&T`s core values: poetry, politics and an open and supportive atmosphere. It’s poetry opened up for (and often involving) the audience.

I thought it fitting given I saw them on successive days to compare the two. Second: Oxford.

Venue: Turl Street Kitchen vs. Green Note Cafe

  • The Turl Street Kitchen was a lovely place. The upstairs events space doubles as the firstUKcentre dedicated to volunteering and activism: it features a notice board updating you to all the activism and collective projects they’re working on, and a lovely bar/restaurant downstairs. The performance space could’ve used more tables, but was a very intimate little room with good atmosphere.

Comparison: Good atmosphere in a seat of genuine activism. Just gets the nod over Camden’s hipster haven, the Green Note.

Hosts: Steve and Lucy vs Sam and Michelle

  • The hosting was just a bit special at this month’s Hammer and Tongue, as H&T founder and Oxford host Steve Larkin handed over the torch to new hosts Lucy Ayrton and Tina Sederholm. Giving a brief history of H&T from its beginnings (originally inspired by the B52 Two) rooted in politics, activism and the belief poetry can be a medium for change, it was a rousing reminder of where H&T came from and the reason we perform poetry.
  • He followed up by later taking a turn as the ‘Sacrifical Poet’ (used to calibrate judges’ scores for the slam) with a raucous poem ‘Fat Sex in D Minor’ ripping into the content of women’s magazines obsessed with body size and how to have better sex. Consummate delivery, matched with expert use of repetition, it build his aggravation to a frantic peak as he savaged magazines’ cynical recycling of sex, fat and the appropriated idea of the ‘new woman’. 24.2.
  • Lucy Ayrton took over hosting duties (Tina was sadly absent) and she made for a charming host. Friendly, funny and with a bit of a twinkle in her eye, she and Steve combined to keep the evening ticking nicely.
  • Like Steve her first foray into performance poetry was political and her poem ‘I Don’t Hate Men, I Just Hate You’ was overflowing with fluid rhythm and quick-footed rhymes. She packs a lot into the poem, rattling it out in righteous fashion as she dismantles the fiction that, as a feminist, she hates men. Her faux-patronising was especially entertaining.

The comparison: Tough. Sam and Michelle of Camden are excellent, butOxford’s touching handover of hosting from Steve Larkin to Lucy Ayrton distilled the essence of H&T and sneaked a victory.

Slam: Oxford vs Camden

  • Peter Whitton. His poem on Savonarola (complete with audience call and response) was full of amusing rhyme and benefited from an enthused audience. A rollicking rhythm buoys the poem of monks, papal decadence and doom along. Gerald Manley Hopkins meets Tom Lehrer. 23.2
  • James Webster. I had a lot of fun, it was a lovely crowd, they seemed to like my poem ‘What Are You Thinking’ (on a woman asking her partner for his thoughts, late at night and his reluctance to share) and gave me a very kind 25.7.
  • Joe Hughes had a couple of nicely nostalgic poems. One on walking in on his parents en flagrante that’s very funny, becomes kind of idyllic and ends with him in hospital, and another ‘Dolly Mixture’ on the different ways he and his sister used to eat sweets. Appropriately sweet. 25.2
  • Darrell Moore’s ‘Bankers Wrath’ was very funny and impressively full of jargon that kept the poem rolling, his banker character is appropriately awful and creepy (threatens the narrator with being ‘processed like a chicken nugget’). 25.7
  • Paul Askew’s three short poems were fabulous. The first on an Oxford Tube journey that was a well-expressed example of public transport imaginings on seeing a pretty girl. ‘Sex in the City’ used the title as the central refrain about his ex-girlfriend, changing the words slightly each time that created a superbly embarrassed humour. And ‘Potatoes’ was on a poor family for whom potatoes are not only their sustenance, but their toys and in extreme (-ly embarrassing) cases their pornography. All very funny and exceptionally performed. 27.1

Winner: Paul Askew and rightfully so.

Comparison: Some very good poets at both events, butOxford were just a little more consistently excellent (and the score seem to reflect this).

Feature

  • Anna McCrory is utterly charming. The president of Oxford University Poetry Society (pronounced ‘oops’) her poems were erudite, funny and charismatically performed.
  • Her first ‘To Man who Splashed in Puddle’, inspired by a puddle inManchester, was a good character piece with some light parody of herself, it was self aware and very amusing.
  • ‘Geeks United’ was by far my favourite. An incredibly sweet, geek-hip take on the socially awkward adapting to university life (“I’m going to listen to some of that ‘emu’ music …”). Her performance, complete with actions, was very accomplished and the whole things was endearingly loser-ish. When she said “We’re geeks who high-five … high-five?” I wanted to get up and high-five her.
  • Her next ‘The Von Ratts’ was a reimagining of the singing family from The Sound of Music; Anna outlined her plan to get her singing and rapping family on Britain’s Got Talent/X-Factor. Hilarity ensued, and it was quite a nice commentary on the inherent problems on grooming children for stardom.
  • Finally ‘The Wizard of Argos’ gave us some incredible lyricism onArgos, all dressed up as film and fairytale. Very nice satire.

Comparison: As charming and funny and erudite as Anna is, Paula and Richard over at Camden just edged it with the double team.

The final feature (both here and in Camden) was Henry Bowers, Swedish poet extraordinaire, who will soon receive his own Spotlight feature, as he is just that good.

Overall comparison: In the end there was not much between the two fantastic nights, I think I enjoyed Oxford a touch more thanks to Steve Larkin’s potted history of H&T and his moving handover to the new team. But both nights gave a great account of what makes Hammer & Tongue nights so fun and makes their brand so unique.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 2,213 other followers