Tina Sederholm | Sabotage

Posts Tagged ‘Tina Sederholm’

Anna Domoney, Bill Frizzell, Bohdan Piasecki, Davey Mac, Enrico Petrusso, Gulliver, Hammer & Tongue, James Webster, Lucy Ayrton, Nick Short, performance poetry, slam, Spoken Word, Tina Sederholm, Vanessa Kisuule

Review: Hammer & Tongue Oxford 13/11/12

In Performance Poetry on February 2, 2013 at 10:00 am

- reviewed by James Webster -

Hammer & Tongue’s new season continues …

Have I mentioned that I really like Hammer & Tongue? I’m sure I have. I must’ve done. Anyway, if I haven’t (or you haven’t seen my previous effusive reviews of Hammer & Tongue events) then I really do. One of the things I like most about H&T’s events is the quality of feature poets they tour round the country; indeed, I’ve found some of my favourite Spoken Word performers at their events, such as Kate Tempest, Disraeli and November’s feature Bohdan Piasecki.

Bohdan Piasecki – a man of poetical magnetism

The room hushes into silence. You can feel a tension in the air as every ear strains to hear and every eye is riveted to the stage. Bohdan has just taken the mic and immediately wrapped the entire room around his little finger with his heart-rendingly beautiful ‘Almost Certainly Impossible’. The poem was both chilling and hopeful: trying to see the beauty in a bomb’s explosion by describing the dance of atoms or calling it a ‘fiery flower you only see bloom once’; or imagining that someone somewhere was chronicling those lost as more than just a statistic, instead monitoring the minutiae of their life. His imagery and metaphors mixed with and matched his meaning with perfect poignancy.

If the power of his words weren’t enough, his easy manner with the audience drew us into the world of his poetry, while his anecdotes (‘have you ever kicked down a door? I have and it’s the best thing I’ve done. BOOM, fuck you door!’, witticisms and wordplay elicited plenty of laughs. To put it simply, he held the audience rapt from the very first until the very breath of his performance.

He demonstrates a nice variety of styles and tones, too, flexing acrobatically between whimsical and slightly melancholic stories like ‘George and the Fog’, nostalgic and insightful pieces like ‘Of Kings and Wasps and Flowers’ and the sumptuous love poem ‘The Gift’ that wraps the city of Warsaw up in words and presents it to his partner.

I honestly felt a little bit in love with his words after that performance, but I’m fairly sure the rest of the audience were right there with me, so that’s ok.

Of course, Bohdan wasn’t the only feature of the evening, Vanessa Kisuule also gave a stellar set …

Vanessa Kisuule – offensively talented for someone still quite young …

Sabotage have actually reviewed Vanessa before (at the H&T National Finals and also a gig at The Tea Box) and our reviewers have always had lovely things to say, but this is the first time I’d heard her perform.

And … wow.

She’s got a charming way with words, spinning stories with feeling, poignancy and humour.

For example her poem ‘Strawberries’ wove together strands of naive sweetness (‘bizarre novelty of the word boyfriend tingling on my lips’), wistful regrets and amusing anecdote to tell a story of young love. All the while remaining self-aware enough to tease and poke fun of herself and how society teaches us to love.

Or there’s how she delves into her relationship with the work of Michael Jackson (it seems she’s an unrepentant fan) that ranges from teen awkwardness (‘Yeah, but he’s better than McFly, so shut up!’) to social criticism (‘you taught me we were all vultures, all of us’) and always bringing the piece back to a powerful emotional resonance. Particularly clever was how she used the language of his music to build up a poetry of kinship and then loss, while the image of he losing a glove and imagining that she’s channeling MJ is one that’s stuck with me.

While ‘Sex Education Class’ is an encapsulation of all the sexual pressure put on women in modern times and how potentially damaging it is, when you still feel like a ‘tourist in your own body’ because society doesn’t let you feel like you own it. It’s very stirring stuff and a very important message (though at points the piece seem to imply that anyone who does sexualise themselves is giving in, that it can never be their choice).

She mixes the personal and the social-political with equal emotion, intelligence, and equally good jokes.

The Slam

The H&T open slam is always something of an adventure: ably hosted by Tina Sederholm and Lucy Ayrton, it pits all comers against each other in a poetic deathmatch (without the death), and we get all different styles and subjects spilling out of the chaos. At this event, however, it was even more so for me as I was asked to be one of the five judges …

Oh the power, the sweet, corrupting power. Just thinking back to it is enough to illicit a small and evil giggle. Ahem, but seriously it’s a strange task, having to judge someone’s creative endeavours, while the audience try to sway you with cheers and boos, alternately casting you as their heroic spokesperson or as panto villain (depending on how much they agree with your score).

I first tried out this new found power on the sacrificial poet (like a sacrificial lamb, but with poetry) whose name sounded like ‘Del Boy‘. Apparently, he’s ‘met a lot of special women in [his] life’, but you wouldn’t guess it from the poem, a prosaic piece that managed to be both overly saccharine and overly objectifying.

Kicking off the slam proper was Rob, whose political spitfire rap-rhyming style was impressive, with some nice dirty and violent imagery, but he lost a lot of the words by not varying his delivery and it didn’t fit together as a poem.

Bill Frizzell‘s ‘Tip of My Tongue’ was a fun and comic poem in honour of Movember and cancer awareness. It elicited a bunch of laughs, but could’ve done with some more original expression.

Alex‘s ‘Totem’ was another political piece with a strong central metaphor, railing against show-democracy and social injustice, but it mixed too many metaphors and didn’t fit together coherently.

Reigning H&T champ Davey Mac was next with a piece that utilised conspiratorially quiet delivery and subtle rhyme; intelligent and painful in all the right ways.

Another H&T regular, Gulliver, was next and his piece on the ‘elephants under our bed’ had a strong surreal comedy running through it, and the elephants were possibly a metaphor for either an abusive relationship or yob culture … maybe? It was hard to tell and I seriously struggled to see any point.

Nick Short gave two pieces, first a concise and angry piece about the lies of food marketing. The second … was effective satire, but the over-exaggerated violence got really uncomfortable.
Sabotage Editor Claire Trévien was next; her ‘Introduction to My Love’ used academic language well to comically express love. But her performance was stilted and some of the jokes were more clever than funny.

Anne Domoney (who we know as part of Lashings of Ginger Beer) piece was a smart and quietly powerful dissection of feminism and the importance of speaking up when something bothers you. The faux-cheerfulness as she debunked the idea of ‘yes, I choose to get upset’ was a joy. But she could have developed the language more creatively.

Enrico Petrusso gave a breathily nightmarish poem that was freakily visceral and creepily well-phrased. He over-used the archaic language a bit though …

Micah rounded off the slam with a multi-part poem full of clever (if abstract) wordplay. He won over the audience with his warmth, light touch with comedy, and a thoughtful theme that just about came together from several disparate images.

Winner: Micah.

On judging: it’s truly an odd gig. And I’m fairly sure most of the audience and poets hated me for my harsh scores by the end; I found the key was to boo myself louder than the audience did, then it was all ok.

Overall

A fun slam that was outshone by two truly marvelous features. A really good night. Oh, and the next one’s coming up next Tuesday at the Old Fire Station. If you’re in Oxford then I definitely recommend it.

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Anna Saunders, Brenda Read Brown, Dan Holloway, Graham Eccles, Guy Williams, Helen Harvey, James Dolton, James Webster, Joel Denno, Kieran King, Lucy Ayrton, Nick Short, Shush, slam, Spoken Word, Tina Sederholm, Wantage, Wantage Not Just Betjeman Literary Festival

Review: Wantage Poetry Slam – Wantage Betjeman Poetry Festival 28/10/12

In Festival, Performance Poetry on November 6, 2012 at 9:00 am

- reviewed by James Webster and special guest reviewer Lucy Ayrton -

@ Shush

The Event

Last Sunday, I attended the Wantage Slam was part of the wider Wantage (not just) Betjeman Poetry Festival, which featured a slew of interesting readings, performances and workshops (often Betjeman themed due to his long association with Wantage).

The Slam billed itself as ‘a fast and furious, X Factor- style, spoken word stand-off ‘ and for the most part lived up to that description admirably. Featuring 12 different poets, with a variety of different lyrical styles, we were served up some excellent rapid-fire rhyme and thoughtful storytelling as the poets battled it out for first place.

The Slam Style

Splitting the 12 performers into four heats of three (brackets selected randomly from a hat), with the winners going on to the final round, poets were judged on three categories: quality of writing, quality of performance, and audience reaction. It was my first experience of the ‘bracketed’ slam system, and I had to say I enjoyed it, and while scoring by three distinct categories is not always the most popular of judging styles, it does ensure poets are encouraged to give rounded performances.

Where it fell down is that, while billed as ‘X Factor-style’, it actually wasn’t enough like X-Factor … which is a statement I should probably qualify as soon as possible. Allow me to rephrase: where the show fell down, for me, was that while judging on the three different categories is not such a problem, the lack of transparency in scoring is. I found myself really wanting to know the breakdown in scores if only so I knew which judge to cheer/boo when I agreed/disagreed with a score. Plus, it’d be nice for the poets to know where their performance has potential room for improvement.

The Poets

Heat 1: Lucy Ayrton, James Dolton and Graham Eccles

Lucy Ayrton: a Sabotage favourite (we gave her Edinburgh show 5 stars twice), Lucy performed ‘Little China Figures’, a brittle and adorable piece, buoyed by waves of smooth rhyme, the poem told a powerfully realised and bittersweet story. But it suffered slightly from an unusually stilted performance. 17

James Dolton: his poem ‘Reading Too Fast’ was cleverly self-referential to his writing and delivery, with excellent use of performance and slick cadences. It did tend to repeat itself, which may have been the point, but made it somewhat dull towards the end. 24

Graham Eccles: also performed a piece on writing poetry, which had some pretty good gags (especially a cat setting his poem on fire) and amusingly clunky rhyme, but didn’t come to a head nearly soon enough. 20

Heat 2 (points not announced): Kieran King, Nick Short and Brenda Read Brown

Kieran King: performed two pieces, the first ‘Whatever Happened to the Heroes’ had quick-fire delivery and a relatable subject (all the heroes have sold out, let us down or died), but seemed simplistic and perhaps undercut itself (saying ‘I can think for myself’ while bemoaning the dearth of heroes to look up to). His poem on sticking out at metal gigs was a strong, rat-a-tat, one-note joke on metal being in your heart, not your clothes. 2nd

Nick Short: announcing his poem as ‘for anyone who works in an office’, he had decent timing, but it was ultimately comic grumpiness with little real insight and a hint of sexism (deriding colleagues for being excited about their children with a ‘congratulations, you spread your legs’ comment). 3^rd

Brenda Read Brown: was ridiculously likeable. Her poem on creating a new ‘old-age’ political party was full of wit and wordplay (‘kids drunk on WKD-40’ and the idea of a ‘drive-by grumbling’) and just about transgressed into being genuinely political. The litany of fears and loss that it built to was also pretty powerful. 1^st

Heat 3: Helen Harvey, Joel Denno and Tina Sederholm

Helen Harvey: the third poet to deliver a meta-writing poem, her personification of poetry was reasonably original, with some vivid imagery (‘I carved quills from my fingernails’) in her search for a muse. But some of her delivery was disjointed and her performance fell a bit flat.

Joel Denno: taking the form of a homework assignment for school-children, this poem was disjointed, with various sections that didn’t form a coherent whole, leaving a kind of bifurcated and pointless poem (with bonus gothic gore that, while decent, didn’t lend any more of a point). 22

Tina Sederholm: performed her piece on cupcakes (from her show Evie and the Perfect Cupcake, rated 4 stars by Sabotage) in all its voyeuristic and frosted glory. Her repeated cries of ‘lick me’ build very amusingly, while her sugar-sweet language of hunger and hollow fulfilment pulled the audience in admirably. 22

Heat 4: James Webster, Dan Holloway and Guy Williams.

(Special Guest Reviewer Lucy Ayrton taking over here, so Webster doesn’t have to review himself)

James Webster: came to the stage after a truly ridiculous intro, and his piece ‘MCWASPSM’ had a good tempo and rhythm and his flawed take on socialism was a great section. The piece had a coherent structure and clarity and the line ‘I don’t mean to complain, I don’t mean anything at all’ was a brilliant line that probably would have been a better ending than the unnecessary verses that followed. 22

(Thanks, Lucy, I’ll tag you out now)

Dan Holloway: Dan’s poem ‘Making Fairytales’ contained a plethora of verdant and gorgeous language (‘folded poems into paper planes’), full of magical and dirty imagery, with a thoughtful and assured delivery that was a breath of fresh air. 21

Guy Williams: of his two pieces the better was a dull poem on how he solved problems DIY style by chopping them in half. The worse was a creepy piece best summed up as ‘breasts are nice to look at, which isn’t really sexism is it? Oh, it is? Well don’t worry I’ve checked my sexism at the door after my daughter started growing boobs’. I’m sure it was intended as satire, which it kind of worked as, but it needed more thought and self-awareness to work.

Final: James Webster, James Dolton, Brenda Read Brown, Joel Denno and Tina Sederholm.

(I once again pass over to Lucy Ayrton for reviewing duties, Lucy?)

James Webster’s ‘What Are You Thinking’ had a strong voice, good opening and some amusing back and forth between its different voices. The shift into more resonant imagery was satisfying and Webster nimbly flitted between funny and touching lines, with a lovely lyrical voice. I’ve heard this poem before and it’s improved: very good.

(Thanks again, Lucy, your cheque’s in the post)

James Dolton’s poem was pleasantly abstract, seeming to use different strands/images to chart the course of a life/forming of a mind. The excellent use of on and off mic sections worked well to draw the audience in and delineate different ideas, mixing some cool word-association and plays with meaning together into an effective performance.

Brenda Read Brown cast herself as an appropriately fallible/human God in ‘In the Beginning’, a rollicking ride through Her attempts at creating life, going through some amusing missteps before finally creating evolution and leaving them to it. Funny, clever, and in the end a moving elegy to the excellence that is a God-like humanity.

Joel Denno continued his theme of ‘poems that seem entirely pointless’ with a piece about orchards going on strike. Not weird enough to work as surrealism, yet not biting enough to work as satire or allegory, I was left admiring some of his technique, but wondering ‘why’.

Tina Sederholm’s ‘Love Tokens’ is a heartfelt and humorous piece, with a consummate performance. Reimagining her husband’s messes as ‘love tokens, signs of your devotion’, she utilises a lovely refrain to subtly build a layered performance where her metaphor defeats her own frustrations. Simply excellent.

The Winners and Prizes

Brenda Read Brown – £100 and slots at future festivals
James Dolton – £70
Tina Sederholm - £30
Joel Denno – Wine
James Webster – comedy tickets

Overall

A fun slam, which was well hosted by Anna Saunders with energy and good humour (poets who went overtime were threatened with nebulous punishments to be meted out in the back room). As with all slams there were some mixed performances, but the majority was entertaining, with special praise going to the top three of Tina, Dolton and Brenda who all wowed me.

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Ash Dickinson, Dana Bubulj, Edinburgh Fringe, Evie and the Perfect Cupcake, Graeme Hawley, Inky Fingers, James Webster, performance poetry, Pulp Fiction Books, Sparkle and Dark Travelling Players, Spoken Word, The Girl With No Heart, Tina Sederholm

Edinburgh Reviews Day 7 (07/08/12) part 2: The Girl with No Heart, Evie and the Perfect Cupcake, Ash Dickinson @ the Inky Fingers Minifest

In Festival, Performance Poetry on August 10, 2012 at 11:05 pm

- reviewed by James Webster and Dana Bubulj -

These are the last of the Edinburgh reviews from Sabotage’s Performance Editor James Webster and his stalwart reviewer Dana Bubulj. We had a great time in Edinburgh, saw some amazing spoken word artists and reviewed 35 shows. And although this means we mightn’t have new bumper-reviews every day, we’ve got some people on the ground at the Fringe, ready to catch the things we’ve missed (although, still no competitive crop dusting).

If you haven’t checked out the previous reviews then you can find them here: Day 1,Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 part 1, Day 4 part 2, Day 5, Day 6 part 1, Day 6 part 2, Day 7 part 1.

Evie and the Perfect Cupcake

Tina Sederholm’s vision of an alternate reality, the ‘Calorie Galaxy’, where the world is ruled by ‘The Thinners’ and weight is obsessively monitored and obsessed over, is a near flawless depiction of a world that is all-too familiar.

As mentioned in the review of the preview, the world-building is creative and gorgeous, full of clever devices and inventive ideas (the ‘warlocks of extreme pastry’ who create desserts to be admired as art and never eaten are my favourite) that highlight the way the damaging food-dystopia of the ‘Calorie Galaxy’.

What had changed from the previous review was that the show was far more smoothly performed and had been cut, stitched and streamlined (now coming in at a very manageable 45 mins) and this more focused performance made for a stronger show. And while there were still moments that were judgemental of the deliberately flawed characters, they came across as brainwashed mouthpieces for the ‘Thinners’ (rather than 2-dimensional straw men/women), which made for a better and more coherent show. I warn you though: it still carries a trigger warning for anyone sensitive to the subject of weight/calorie-counting or casual rape jokes.

The show’s message about the damage of societal obsession with weight and size instead of health came across strongly, with Tina’s language fluctuating from luscious to fragile and perceptive, it made for a heady mixture and a very powerful show.

Star Rating: 4/5

Evie and the Perfect Cupcake was on at 5pm at The Banshee Labyrinth and the last show was on the 9^th August. If you can see this show in another venue in the future we heartily recommend it.

The Girl with no Heart

The Girl With No Heart, from Sparkle and Dark’s Travelling Players, combines live action with puppetry to create a heartbreaking story of a paper world ravaged by war where children’s hearts power nuclear blasts as they are torn in two. The puppet characters were stunning, and they were moved and spoke very expressively. The idea of the paper-hearts, which the children kept on their person but hidden, say on their sleeve, was reminiscent of Pullman’s daemons, particularly in the energy from their violent severing.

World building is introduced through the eyes of our protagonist, an ingénue from a parallel Eden-like world. As such, her wide-eyed wonder at the bleakness of war and its fallout made for a played-out dynamic, but it was rescued by the use of story-telling as a mechanic for escapism and as a way to properly compare the ‘reality’ of the ash-world with her own. There is a great use of origami cranes, both as a means of transport and potential escape and their relation to the Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima.

It is a powerful and enjoyable play, but make sure you get a view of the front of the stage, because much of the story-telling is set there, and it is easy to miss a lot of detail.

Star Rating: 4/5

The Girl with no Heart is on at 5pm at Bedlam Theatre, from 9th-25th August (not 13th)

Ash Dickinson @ the Inky Fingers Minifest

The Inky Fingers Minifest is running alongside the Fringe festival in Edinburgh until tomorrow (the 11^th) with a plethora of interesting literary and performance events. On Tuesday Sabotage saw multi-slam winner Ash Dickinson, supported by Graeme Hawley, at Pulp Fiction Books.

Graeme Hawley gave a thoughtful and occasionally angry set; ‘Ambition’ explored his fascination with the people who place 6^th or 7^th and was a sweet tale on those athletes who train as hard, but don’t win, whose ‘fireworks went off in daylight’, ‘Additives’ was a brilliantly phrased poem using mayonnaise as a metaphor for all the things we mess things up and try to fix (instead of not messing up), and ‘Mosaic’ was an ace piece railing against debt culture, accompanied by an actual mosaic made of chopped up credit cards. That said, I feel with a better performance and more interesting language, he could be even better.

Ash himself (runner-up of the UK All-Star competition) performed an entertaining set filled with short punchy comedy pieces, including some great haikus, while his poem on ‘Shoes’ explored one of the few areas where men suffer more than women: lack of interesting clothes (though he may have overlooked the fact that heels can be somewhat painful). He does redress the balance with a nice, if simplistic, piece on women’s magazines, expressing a simple message of confidence and inner beauty that wasn’t too preachy.

A few of his other pieces were also a little simplistic, such as the funny ‘The Boy Who Ate Only Butter’ or the well put, but slightly prosaic ‘Status Update’. It’s not that that’s inherently bad, it just seems like he could have done more with them.

Where he excelled were his more speculative pieces, ‘Daytrip From Your Heart’ was a brilliantly realised journey through a loved one’s body, taking it in as if it were a tourist attraction, with an amusingly downbeat ending. And his poem on doing a life swap with the ocean was phenomenally imagined, with some lovely lilting language, great comedy and a brilliantly wistful ending.

Star Rating: 3/5

Inky Fingers’ Minifest continues tomorrow with guerrilla street performance at 2.30pm at a surprise location, then Poetry Polaroids (a great project of collaborative poetry artwork) at 6.30pm and the closing party at 8pm, both at Pulp Fiction Books.

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Dana Bubulj, Edinburgh Fringe, Evie and the Perfect Cupcake, James Webster, Lucy Ayrton, Lullabies to Make Your Children Cry, performance poetry, Spoken Word, Tina Sederholm

Review: Tina Sederhom and Lucy Ayrton – Edinburgh Previews

In Performance Poetry on July 27, 2012 at 1:49 am

@ The Old Fire Station

- reviewed by James Webster and Dana Bubulj -

This month Sabotage had the chance to catch two upcoming spoken word shows by two of Oxford’s foremost poetic talents. Both were excellently feminist and political, touching on social issues that effect pretty much all women (and many men, for that matter), and both explored their chosen themes with depth and insight. Here’s what Sabotage thought.

Tina Sederholm – Evie and the Perfect Cupcake

This piece took the form of a full hour long poem, exploring the life of Evie (a relatable and beleaguered everywoman, hence the name) in a version of reality called the Calorie Galaxy.

Tina’s language expertly captures the viciousness of policing peoples’ weight (both internally and externally) so perceptively that it should possibly come with a trigger warning (as many blogs relating to calorie counting do). Indeed, the language is gorgeous throughout, especially in its descriptions of characters, while the language used to describe food throughout is alternately sumptuous (about cupcakes) and depressing (about celery). Only the occasional line falls flat and undercuts the effectiveness of the writing, such as ‘[you] feel guilty as a rapist if you eat a single biscuit’, which seems to make an unnecessary joke of a serious issue for a cheap payoff.

Tina’s performance is also good, whether as too-good-to-be-true Perfectionetta (Evie’s sister) with her tone all clipped and fragile; or in her Aunt Gloria’s impassioned eulogy to the messiness of life; and always as the harassed Evie: hounded on all sides by voices telling her how to live her life. Tina’s tone and delivery convey all this with aplomb, and her performance of the claustrophobic vaudeville of Perfectionetta’s TV-show towards the end is especially good (in a terror-inducing way). My only criticism would be that occasionally this slips and the characters end up sounding a bit too similar.

It’s full of fantastic world-building in the best traditions of speculative fiction and sci-fi. Tina evokes a world that is decidedly different, where the differences are both beautifully drawn and serve to expertly highlight issues within our own world. This is a world where every citizen must weight themselves daily (and are reminded by implants), where the inhabitants’ wages (‘you are 10,000 calories overdrawn’) and importance in society is determined by their weight and image. It’s a world where people are obsessed with food to the point that it is fetishised, cupcakes created by ‘sugarcane wizards … and warlocks of extreme pastry’ and admired as art, and you can get talking diet-books. Sedeholm uses the device of the Calorie Galaxy as a distancing effect to hold up a mirror to our own society’s views on food, weight, beauty and how insidiously people’s attitudes towards those things can be distorted by media and societal expectations.

Where the show falls down is that it seems almost trapped in the very judgemental attitudes it is so effectively railing against. There are references to models having eyes that ‘bely a certain emptiness’, while Perfectionetta is constantly criticised (both implicitly and explicitly) for embracing the values of the Calorie Galaxy. And while, of course, her attitudes towards weight/image are unhealthy (having a tummy tuck as part of her c-section, needing drugs to maintain her lifestyle of glamour and dieting), the show might seem less at odds with itself if it addressed how the society of the Calorie Galaxy makes its inhabitants judgmental and unpleasant, rather than judging them for being so. It seems that the only way Tina could advocate a balanced attitude towards food (expressed in Gloria’s sage advice of ‘eat when you’re a bit hungry and stop when you’re a bit full’) is by decrying other characters’ choices as bad, trading one prescriptive overbearing outlook for another (albeit a much healthier one).

Ultimately, this is a rare find: a show that is both entertaining and important; attitudes towards food/weight/image contribute massively towards many peoples’ unhappiness, and it’s great to see a show tackling this. But while it brilliantly shows the importance of making your own life choices (as Gloria’s ace final speech points out), it fails on its own terms by judging people who make another choice (e.g. anyone who might consider dieting or cosmetic surgery).

The language, performance and world building have such quality that this could be easily a 4-star show. However, the way the writing seems to undercut its own point means I must regretfully award:

Star Rating: 3/5

Lucy Ayrton - Lullabies to Make Your Children Cry

I had seen an earlier version of this at The Dogstar, and even then was amazed by how polished the show seemed to be. Ayrton’s show plays with lyrical storytelling, with a discussion of the origin of fairy tales wrapped in music. With each set piece, she introduces the concepts with a brief, personable precis that doesn’t bog the poems down but instead gives enough context for them to shine.

In case any of you were planning to take your children to see this (though why you’d want to make them cry, I can only imagine), it’s not really a children’s show; the themes are universal in those who have lived a little. Her ‘Let me be Lost’ is a nice take on modern life and the roles given to us and the ones we struggle to live up to, especially as women (“herbal tea and tequila.. both taste of defeat”). In framing it as a semi-confession that is half admitted lest they give it away “in their sleep” works well: the desire to sometimes be carried can be tempting. ‘Bonfire Juice’ is another one that deals with modern reality, with the smokiness of Lapsang Souchong stirring memories of a past relationship and a holiday in the country, with Agas and whiskey once the milk’s run out. The repeated “do you remember…” keeps to the theme that stories are highly personal, fragile things to be passed down.

With the introduction of printing presses and an emerging cultural hegemony, stories become authored, mainly by white, Western men. With a rendition of Anderson’s The Shepherdess and the Sweep, Ayrton does discuss the patriarchy’s lack of decent roles for women or respect for their agency, but not in a didactic way that might detract from the flow of the show.

Ayrton has a beautiful singing voice, and it’s used well: Disney’s ‘Trust in Me’, becomes a surprisingly sultry, quiet coercion that you’d willingly give into. Similarly, my favourite piece, ‘The Nightingale’, has a really lovely sung refrain breaking up the story of a woman who falls in love with a knight other than her husband, spending the nights on adjacent balconies talking until they are caught, with violent consequences. She has a good voice, clear and emotive, well suited to her medium.

A cautionary tale for our time, ‘Tarquin’ learns not to be pedantic and correct demons, even if they think Battersea Park is the Ark they, the “frozen chosen” were to protect. The story is fluidly told, with a haunting melody played to complement the two voices in a childlike standoff.

She finishes with two stories: one written to be drafts of the most “perfect, right on, brilliant, hilarious story ever”, of a girl who makes it rain when she’s told she can’t do something, a delightful dragon, a slightly useless prince, and a typical fairy-tale feudal system. The story is tongue and cheek and very entertaining. To close, a piece crowd-sourced by the audience doing an exquisite corpse style version – which has been a delight every time I’ve seen it done.

The show is fabulous, with a strong narrative running through it and compelling set pieces. If you’re interested in stories and the power of narrative, then this is a must see.

Star Rating: 5/5

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Anna McCrory, Aubrey Mvula, Dan Holloway, Hammer & Tongue, Lucy Ayrton, Mark Niel, Neil Anderson, Neil Spokes, Paul 'Sex Symbol' Askew, Paul Askew, performance poetry, Pete the Temp, Review, slam, Tina Sederholm

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.

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Anna McCrory, Aubrey Mvula, Dan Holloway, Davy Mac, Hammer & Tongue, James Webster, Lucy Ayrton, Mark Niel, Neil Spokes, Oxford, Paul Askew, performance poetry, Pete the Temp, Spoken Word, Tina Sederholm

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 12^th 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 12^th May, 8pm, The Old Fire Station

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Alison Brumfitt, Andi McCrae, Andrew Thomkinson, Anna McCrory, Davey Mac, Dyedra Just, Gerry Potter, Hammer & Tongue, James Webster, Lucy Ayrton, Paul Fitchett, performance poetry, Phat Matt Baker, Spoken Word, Tina Sederholm

Oxford Hammer & Tongue: May Mayhem @ The Old Fire Station 08/05/2012

In Performance Poetry on May 10, 2012 at 12:59 am

- reviewed by James Webster -

The Night

After a few months of ping-ponging between different venues it’s nice that Oxford Hammer & Tongue has found a permanent home at the Old Fire Station. It’s a friendly charity venue, promoting social and creative enterprise that H&T have been happily ensconced in since February. And it made an excellent home for a very enjoyable evening of poetry this past Tuesday.

The Hosts

Tina Sederholm and Lucy Ayrton (both of whom are bringing solo shows toEdinburgh this year) continue to impress with their friendliness, humour and buckets of enthusiasm. Tina’s hosting always seems to come with a smile and a sly wink, quick to take the mick out of herself and the audience, while Lucy’s boundless energy is hard to match; they make a great team.

Tina’s poem ‘Christmas Day: A Miracle’ was about her niece, a 5-years-old ardent feminist. It captures a moment of heady childish freedom and energy, as the feminine girl born into a sporty family lets loose of a Christmas walk and just runs and runs.

The Features

Alison Brumfitt gave an entertaining set that at her best was insightful, very funny and impressively rhythm’d and rhymed.
Especially good was ‘I Believe’, a fun mix of Alison’s affirming personal beliefs and her takes on more universal issues. From her funny belief that ‘the root of all evil is the road to Milton Keynes’ followed later by more meaningful epigrams like ‘I don’t believe war feels any better if you win’, it’s a well performed and uplifting approach to life.
Her poem on Sex Ed was an interesting mix, brilliantly pointing out the floors of poor sexual education and how it fails to warn you that penises are not like broom handles or that sex ‘messes with your head’. But then it descends into moaning about ‘mental’ ex-girlfriends.
Indeed, at various less enjoyable points some poems came off as a little trite and obvious, picking on easy targets such as people with allergies or ‘mental’ ex-girlfriends. But even at weaker points, she always did just enough to undercut her own points, making her poems pleasingly 3-dimensional (the Sex Ed poem for example ends with ‘there’s no such thing as safe sex, that’s why I like it so much’).

Gerry Potter introduced by the hosts as a ‘Scouse Legend’ this did not begin to do justice to his captivating stage presence, easy banter and verbal wizardry.
It may seem over the top to say it, but it was one of the most enjoyable sets I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness. He blends strong performance with phenom-like wordsmanship, the performance always perfectly matching the poetry.
‘And Then the Man Said’ conjured the voice of a warm, friendly and inspiring nonsense-prophet, whose advice spans the ridiculous to the profound and back again (‘negotiate friendship without language or money/ and DANCE, kid!’). ‘Love Those Frankenstein Guys’ distilled the essence of the ‘shivering fragility’ of the old pub drunk, captivatingly rendering their sad and ugly beauty. ‘Jimmy Bling’ summoned an image of a working class ‘scally’ turned class-warrior-poet (which was great even when he forgot the words).
But it was ‘The Magician’ that really blew me away. A ringing indictment of the reality television created by the rich to elevate and laugh at the broken (such as X-Factor), it is at once damning (‘Yes! He eats babies!’) and totally understanding of this magician’s appeal as ‘the magician sinks into the belly of his magic as Disney animation tickles him to sleep’.
But the real magician here is Gerry himself, making such magic with his words.

The Slam

If you’ve read any of our H&T reviews before you should know the format: 3 minutes (30 second grace period), one microphone, one sacrificial poet (to get the ball rolling) five judges (marking out of 10), and a final score out of 30 (top and bottom scores knocked off in case the judge is sleeping with the poet). Winning poet goes through to the regional final next month.

Davey Mac’s ‘Life, the Universe and Everything For Richard Dawkins and His Students’ had several amusing lines (‘life is a sexually transmitted disease’), but relied a little too much on scatological humour for my tastes. He did clearly and cleverly express how science, the big bang and evolution are all, fundamentally, a bit silly, but didn’t seem to go anywhere definite with it. 24.3

Dyedre Just, performing for the first time in English, gave a thoughtful and earnest piece on the multiple meanings of ‘time’ and the different ways it impacts on our lives. But it ran overtime slightly and occasionally fell into the trap of being a little pretentious in her ruminations on death. 19.7

Andi McCrae gave us three short, perfectly formed poems. A man bragging about his extramarital exploits on the tube is told the ‘screeching’ sound is not the breaks, but his soul (hilarious). A woman is lovingly described in the warmest terms. And a broken shoe becomes a forlorn symbol of a relationship just too damaged to work. Her poems were skilfully constructed and performed. 25.8

Phat Matt Baker’s comedy revenge fantasy of serving his estate agent’s left testicle on a barbeque tapped into a common hatred of a crooked industry. But bitterness, cheap jokes and violence played for laughs seemed to divide the audience and did nothing for me. 24.6

Andrew Thomkinson performed a superbly phrased poem painting Oxford as an unwelcoming town: graduation gowns turn to crows and there’s ‘no space for angels to land on Oxford’s prickly back’. Lovely rich language, but his performance could have been stronger. 24.2

Anna McCrory’s ‘Wizard of Argos’ is incredibly entertaining, enlivened by Anna’s gift for easy and amusing rhymes, clever use of colloquialisms and intensely likeable delivery. It’s the kind of comedy poem I’d think shallow, if it didn’t get so neatly to the heart of what makes such a common thing as Argos stores a little bit magic. 27.1

Paul Fitchett’s ‘Child Soldiers’ drew powerful parallels between the courage and bravado it takes for a teenager boy to approach a girl across the dance floor (with a spray of Lynx as ‘body armour’) and the bravado said teenager takes with him when he goes to war. He brilliantly brought the powerful and terrifying realities of love and war in adolescence crashing together. 26.5

Winner: Anna McCrory

A really strong slam, with great potential from several new faces to Hammer & Tongue. I’m really looking forwards to seeing more of Paul Fitchett, Andi McCrae and Andrew Thomkinson and see how they develop as performance poets.

In the end every poet was at the least entertaining, and at the most they were powerful, charming and borderline transcendent: a very good night from Hammer & Tongue Oxford as they build to their final in June.

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'Angry' Sam Berkson, Adam Kammerling, Amy McAllister, Anna Freeman, Cat Brogan, Charlie Dupré, Chris McCormick, Chris Parkinson, Curious, Dana Bubulj, David Lee Morgan, Fay Roberts, Hammer & Tongue, Holly McNish, James Bunting, Jeremy Toombs, Jessie Durrant, Koel Mukherjee, Lucy Ayrton, Mac McFadden, Mark Niel, Michael Parker, Michelle Madsen, National Slam Final, performance poetry, Pete the Temp, Peter Hunter, Phat Matt Baker, Poems, Poet Curious, poetry, Sally Jenkinson, slam, Spliff Richard, Steve Larkin, Tina Sederholm, Vanessa Kisuule, Wilton's Music Hall, Yvo Luna

Hammer and Tongue National Slam Final: The Individuals 31.03.12

In End of year round-up, Performance Poetry on April 22, 2012 at 5:44 pm

@ Wilton’s Music Hall

- by Dana Bubulj -

Part two of the Hammer and Tongue Final: this review concentrates on the Individual slam at the beautiful Wilton’s Music Hall. 18 Poets that had qualified through the Hammer and Tongue Regional Slams were now pitted against each other. While we saw many during the Team Battle(!) earlier that day, with mostly different poems under their belt and a packed, enthusiastic audience made this a fantastic evening. (Also, Cat Brogan fulfilled her promise to do cartwheels on stage whenever anyone got a 10.0, which was surprisingly under-exploited).

Scoring in slams are often tricky to explain. You have to factor in individual biases, take into account direct comparison between the preceding poet, bumper scoring to offset potential time penalties, and, of course, score creep (more likely for comic poems). That said, it was refreshing to have such disparate scores, with judges showing a range of tastes for different kinds of poems.

Rounds: Three heats of six poets, two each heat qualified to a semi final, then three went on to the final. Sam Berkson & Steve Larkin hosted the heats. Weirdly, there was a large break between the first two heats and the third, but we resumed with new judges.

Favourites of the Heats:

Vanessa Kisuule‘s “Playground Debt” was fantastic: the guilt (“apologies in hindsight are always profuse”) of standing by in school while a boy was bullied (“she gorged on your silence”) with racial slurs and the childhood fear of bullying. (23.8)
David Lee Morgan repeated his great Team Battle(!) poem about the August riots from the perspective of “the man on TV calling you mindless”, exploiting youth’s inexperience with “fingers around [their] thoughts” to serve authority’s ends. (23.1)
Sacrificial Poet, Michael Parker owned the stage, and had great rapport with the audience as he told us how “[we] would have loved [the poem that he'd written]“. This was fantastic theatricality, booming “OUR POET KING” (as we would have crowned him). I believed him. (23.8)
Anna Freeman‘s “If History Has Taught Us Anything” was a scathing commentary on how regressive politics have become recently (“I want to be pig ignorant”). A nice twist end: imploring us to pick up our pitchforks and guillotines. (24.8)

I also particularly liked:

Spliff Richard‘s plea to stop reggae music’s increasing anger and homophobia (“whatever happened to one love?”) was heartfelt; with a nice juxtaposition to the multiple defences for ganja. (25.9)
Amy McAllister‘s “Role play” painted a believable relationship where the participants only stayed together because “London’s massive and we’re lonely”, sacrificing standards (“I only expect 30% on your part”) and kissing only because they’re “tired of talking”. (24.3)
Curious had a great poem about refugees who “fled to sea”, from “distant lands … far and few”. The first half, which dealt with the journey and impetus, before settling and assimilating into Western culture, was especially good. (24.2)
Jessie Durrant reminds me a little of Kate Tempest, both in breathy impassioned delivery of personal material and in subject matter: of a friend lost to drugs, leaving “nothing left of the boy [she] knew”. (25.6)
Sacrificial Poet, Pete the Temp, gave an impassioned defence of the Occupy movement, co-opting the audience in a call and response declaration of “No, I’m Spartacus”. It had a good rhythm, even with slightly odd line breaks, and certainly fired people up. (18.4 due to flagrant overtime)

Also Ran:

Yvo Luna‘s “I’m so glad we stayed friends” took on a very bitter, angry voice, with screams played for laughs rather than empathy. (22.3)
Mark Niel professed attraction to audiences in a theatrical, obnoxiously loud manner, complete with partial stripping. I admit I did like one line: “you still crave one night stanzas”. (23.5)
Phat Matt Baker had an ode to a kebab (“dirty doner”), complete with imaginary dialogue in falsetto and scatological humour. The audience laughed, even if I didn’t. (23.1)
Chris Parkinson‘s surreal delivery didn’t stick together as well as his team poem, leaving this poem confused (culminating in a boy being kidnapped by a balaclava’d Prince Philip, as you do). (22.1)
Mac McFadden confessed a love for “A Girl Called Sid”, which played generally off the subversion of gender essentialism in Sid and its reinforcement by the narrator. Unfortunate implications to the dismissive tone of “she thought she was a fella”. (23.4)
Adam Kammerling constructed a surreal scene of working the night shift and, being penniless & hungry, being taunted by the cakes surrounding him. Could have done without “drop your slacks and lube up” threat. (26.8)
Tina Sederholm‘s “Keep Young And Beautiful” was standard commentary on cosmetic culture, complete with its ugly sides (eating disorders/alcoholism). I’d have been happier with it if “feel guilty as a rapist if you eat a single biscuit” wasn’t played for laughs. (22.9)
Charlie Dupré pleased the crowd with admissions of “having a feminine side” and the stereotypical trappings thereof. Arguing for genders being similar would be more effective were it less couched in phrases like “don’t worry lads” or “in 2012, it’s manly”. (25.2)
Cat Brogan gave a raucously crude story of a liaison in a lesbian bar inBerlinwith a woman named Sadie. Joyful and shamelessly explicit. (21.9)
Lucy Ayrton‘s “Fuck you, Corporate Land” was one of the quieter pieces of the night, a meditation on the malaise of office jobs and the importance of seeming happy, even when disappointed with how life has dashed our childhood dreams. (21.8)
Chris McCormick‘s “Math” detailed an argument with a teacher, calling them out on their sexism. At the teacher’s “most girls aren’t good at math”, the audience gave a pantomime-eque gasp; I think points were for sentiment rather than the poem itself. (23.7)

Individual Semi-Final
Hosts: Sam Berkson and Michelle Madsen

Vanessa Kisuule‘s “Bounty” was about the trouble of “society’s scalpel”: feeling “out of place” surrounded by those of her own race. However, rather than analysing the stereotypes she discusses, the poem seemed a little classist (feeling “a traitor because [she] refuse[s] to drop T’s”, or wishing her knowledge of jazz/blues held sway over hip-hop fans). (28.5 OT)
Curious‘s poem was inspired by Black History month, rather problematically. “The Soul of Motown, I am it”, he proclaims, after saying “Black History belongs in [him]“. The poem wished to instil hope rather than guilt into “our children”, in a time of such institutionalised racism, but the appropriation made it a bit dodgy. (26.3)
Amy McAllister was a bittersweet dedication to a depressed friend: hoping their road-trip was full of experiences, from food poisoning to the desert being “overwhelming, in a good way”. (27.1)
Jessie Durrant‘s cheerful poem “Kakorrhaphiophobia” spoke to the performers: about overcoming a fear of failure by embracing the stage, filled with familiar references aimed to inspire. (25)
Spliff Richard‘s “Never Alone” was an defence of marijuana and its ability to instil peace, drawing allusions from the civilisations which used it to his own personal use (I liked how music was “like the g-spot’s been relocated to [his] ear”). (23.1 OT 4:01)
Adam Kammerling‘s poverty piece was his strongest of the day. Taken from own experience with poverty & rooting through an M&S bin for food at night, the hunger was palpable, the rot visceral. The final (expected) line (“not just bin food, it’s M&S bin food”) was said with aplomb to massive applause. (29.1)

WINNERS: Amy McAllister, Vanessa Kisuule, Adam Kammerling

FINAL

Amy McAllister’s “She’s Over” was certainly a different take on moralising; a rallying cry to replace pornography’s seedy underbelly with another kind of passion: that of the “intense determination” of the August riot looters, whose “spunk is on our side” rather than against. (25.4 OT 3:41)
Vanessa Kisuule performed “Little Red Bow” was on a once-idolised friend: a fantastic character piece. With a recurring refrain of “laughing at a joke yet to tell” that created an air of companionable despair, Kisuule captures being on the sidelines of someone’s alcoholism. (25.1 OT 4:08)
Adam Kammerling went back to his rap roots in “Spitting Bars”, an amusing dialogue between an insipid young rapper, all front and no substance, and a literate objector who tears him to shreds. While the rapper was a bit of a straw man/easy target, the back and forth was great, particularly when it played with slang: “you’re killing the art” “fucking right I’m killing the art” “no, in a bad way”. The nod to Wilton’s stage on which he stood went down well, too. (29.6)

WINNER: ADAM KAMMERLING
Who treated us with another rendition of his altercation with the NYPD.

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'Angry' Sam Berkson, Adam Kammerling, Amy McAllister, Anna Freeman, Cat Brogan, Charlie Dupré, Chris McCormick, Chris Parkinson, Curious, Dana Bubulj, David Lee Morgan, Fay Roberts, Hammer & Tongue, Holly McNish, James Bunting, Jeremy Toombs, Jessie Durrant, Koel Mukherjee, Lucy Ayrton, Mac McFadden, Mark Niel, Michael Parker, Michelle Madsen, National Slam Final, performance poetry, Pete the Temp, Peter Hunter, Phat Mac Baker, Poem, Poet, Poet Curious, Sally Jenkinson, slam, Slam Poetry, Spliff Richard, Steve Larkin, Tina Sederholm, Vanessa Kisuule, Wilton's Music Hall, Yvo Luna

Hammer and Tongue National Slam Final: The Team Battles! 31.03.12

In End of year round-up, Performance Poetry on April 22, 2012 at 5:41 pm

@ Wilton’s Music Hall

- by Dana Bubulj and Koel Mukherjee -

Event: Taking the six different chapters of H&T from across the country and pitting them against each other to see which location has the best poets: 1^st two qualifying heats and then a final.

Judges were chosen from the audience, with standard slam rules. (Scores noted, “OT” = if points were docked for going over time.) I was relieved to see the turns alternated between the teams of four poets, keeping it competitive.

There was also an individual slam, with many of the same poets, but that will be covered in another review, so if you feel the poets have been short-changed, they may have longer write ups there.

Venue: Hidden in a back alley near Aldgate East is Wilton’s, the last surviving Grand Music Hall in the world; rather beautiful in its stripped walls, wooden floors and curled columns; a splendour perfectly suited to the occasion.

On a positive accessibility note: the name, team, score and time were projected behind the performers.

The hosts: were excellent. Working in pairs, they kept proceedings fast paced, cracking jokes while scores were collected. They also made sure the audience knew the rules, so as not to exclude newcomers.

HEAT ONE: Brighton VS Cambridge VS Hackney
Hosts: Steve Larkin (Ox) & Michelle Madsen (Camd)

Hackney: Angry Sam (Captain), Adam Kammerling, Amy McAllister, David Lee Morgan

Angry Sam spoke wistfully of snow failing to affect the harshness of business. (25.8)
David Lee Morgan performed movingly on the riots from the perspective of authority. I love this poem to bits, particularly its darkness. (26.8)
Amy McAllister talked accessibly of falling unrequitedly for her flatmate and the drive to escape (“he forgot what he had, scratch that, hadn’t”). (26.5)
Adam Kammerling’s poem about an overheard conversation captured the meandering nature of everyday chatter about a day’s events (things “proper kicked off”), in a realistic tone that nonetheless maintained poetic rhythm. (26.2)

Cambridge: Fay Roberts (Captain), Jessie Durrant, Mark Niel, Hollie McNish

Hollie McNish performed “Wow”, a fantastic piece on body image post-baby. (26.9)
Fay Roberts ”I want more”, a friendly rejection of female magazine advice. Wished she’d made more of the last line that questioned what the media was hiding with such a distraction. (24.6)
Jessie Durrant discussed notions of family in relation to seeing a picture-perfect “catalogue” example, and comparing it with her own version. (26.1)
Mark Niel raged at the frequent misspelling of his surname with the tightly-wound fury of a child’s tantrum. Culminating in the revelation that he was defending himself to a judge, the piece was compelling (if only compelling you to run away – ed) but also rather disturbing. (26.5)

Brighton: Michael Parker (Captain), Yvo Luna, Chris Parkinson, Spliff Richard

Michael Parker’s passionate “100%” built momentum with the effective repetition of “we few” and “we stand together”, combining otherwise isolated protest groups into a united movement. (23.4 OT)
Yvo Luna had several poems, one a great, disturbing love poem with a baby-doll voice conflating kisses with “cuttlefish bones up vertebrae” and “drowning kittens”. (25.3)
Chris Parkinson keyed in to the manic energy of the media with “Fashion Tips for the Last Days”. It unleashed a frenetic bombardment of clashing headlines and surreal imagery, in a hilariously tabloid-worthy tone. (“Would Gandhi have voted for Clegg? We asked Ulster, and they said no!”) (27.1)
Spliff Richard: A fabulous piece dedicated to Kate Tempest, beginning with thunderstorms and ending beautifully with: “She’s the reason hurricanes have girls’ names”. Though the delivery was so fast it was occasionally incomprehensible, his rhythms and amazing flow were exhilarating. (26.1)

Compound Scores: Brighton: 101.9, Cambridge: 104.1. Winner: Hackney, 105.3

HEAT TWO: Bristol VS Camden VS Oxford
Hosts: Angry Sam (Ha) & Michael Parker (Brigh)

Bristol: Sally Jenkinson (Captain), James Bunting, Jeremy Toombs

Sally Jenkinson went twice to make up for Bristol’s reduced team, which worked distinctly in their favour. Her first, (25.9) was a moving entreaty to her sister not to lose herself in disaffection, weaving the lyrical with the everyday in a tone choked with feeling. Both her pieces effectively used evocative details to create atmosphere, whether for the complex familiarity of siblinghood or the vulnerability of insomnia, when “white bones sing awake”. (26.3)
James Bunting’s “Conkers” drew allusions and teased comparisons between a whirlwind romance and carefree children playing in the “rum-gold twilight”. But occasional nice turns of phrase couldn’t overcome the patchwork of clichés, repetitious imagery, and familiar lines you already knew. (26.5)
Jeremy Toombs’s hypnotic voice suited his wandering, Ginsberg-ian reflections. “Hangover Meat Belly” focused on the origins of the meat and alcohol in his stomach. The second, “My Asshole is Burning”, was a musing on diarrhoea and that all poets must shit. Engaging, but the humour was not for everyone. (25.4)

Camden: Michelle Madsen (Captain), Curious, Charlie Dupré, Cat Brogan

Curious first detailed a young black rapper’s use of violent/threatening imagery in performances, then his death at the hands of police who framed him. Vivid and well performed, but confusing and lacking an obvious perspective or message. (24.7 OT)
Michelle Madsen performed “We’d All Melt”, of bittersweet offerings to a relationship that’s ending. I’ve always loved the line: “I give a gift of seven lemons”. (25.9)
Charlie Dupré’s consummately theatrical performance animated this sweet tale of two band members, the kick drum and high hat, who fall in love, leading to solo ambitions, crushed dreams and eventual reconciliation. (24.8)
Cat Brogan on the origin of boycotts and filibustering in 1880s Ireland was full of facts (at the time, 100% of the land was owned by 0.2% of the people) that tied history neatly to contemporary protests. A powerful piece (if a little stilted from occasional forced rhyme). (25.5)

Oxford: Tina Sederholm (Captain), Phat Matt Baker, Chris McCormick, Mac McFadden

Tina Sederholm shared her cute take on a child’s understanding of sex and the euphemisms they’re told, compared to the messy reality adults know. (25.7)
Mac McFadden did a ‘comic’ poem on the shock of being “old enough to be [his] dad”, full of repetition and feigned outrage. The audience responded positively, though the chauvinist fantasies of making a sex tape with Paris Hilton made us cringe. (25.9)
Chris McCormick wants to be a pirate, free of girlfriends and beset by wenches. Much of the poem romanticised this archetype and more could have been made of its glimpses of a lonely, melancholic fantasist underneath (pirates prefer “savage lust, instead of love which they cannot trust”). (25.5)
Phat Matt Baker ranted against landlords shafting students in a confused revenge tale that failed to impress. (25.2)

Compound Scores: Camden 100.9, Oxford 102.3. Winner: Bristol 103.5

Note: The scores in this round seemed to be frustratingly and unfairly stuck between 8.5 – 8.8. Don’t make me graph them as proof.

TEAM SLAM FINAL: Bristol VS Hackney
Hosts: Steve Larkin (Ox) & Tina Sederholm (Ox)

Special mention to sacrificial poet Peter Hunter, whose “On Eyebrows” was masterful: painstakingly explaining the traditional sonnet form and its rhyme scheme, he then performed the piece silently, using said dextrous facial-hair.

Bristol

James Bunting talked of looking for the voice of his ‘Generation’, and not feeling a generational identity. Fixating on icons of prevous generations, he contrasted important voices of the past such as Dylan, with the potential of (for example) himself, or a protestor, to be voices today, and emphasised the confusion and fear of choosing such voices with quotes and cliches. While feeling lost was easy to identify with, the poem’s sense of confusion and adrift-ness was expressed in back-and-forth thoughts which made it feel muddled, and gave it the impression that it suffered from too many endings, some of which were rather trite. We also wished the piece had explored its theme with more depth, perhaps acknowledging that we tend to rose-tint the iconic voices and identities of past generations, that this whole process is a contrivance shaped by our own needs in the present, and considering what acknowledging that means for feeling lost in the here and now. Ultimately, his sometimes strong turns of phrase were not enough to draw his disparate and confused metaphors into a coherent poem. (24.9) Performing twice in this round, his ‘To the Girl Who Loses Herself in Other Peoples’ Mirrors’ received a 25.8.
Sally Jenkinson’s “The Gasman Cometh”, perfectly captured the way your world can shrink in the depths of despair and illness, feverishly elevating the pronouncements of visiting gasmen (“fluorescent gods” with blinding high-vis jackets) to prophesy. (26.4)
Jeremy Toombs‘s “Badass Bop” was a glorious, mesmerising , jazz poem with a great flow, woven with the repeated sounds of beep, bop and beat. Listening was like falling into a dreamlike, music-induced haze. (27.7)

Hackney

Angry Sam‘s compellingly human “100 Greatest”, discussed our obsession with ranking/categorisation to fill voids in our lives with some lovely examples. (25.6)
David Lee Morgan’s trilogy on children, finished with the memorable “Dead Babies”, which hammered home a solemn point by grimly suggesting the volume of dead babies around the world could be used as time-markers (a standard TV episode is 800 dead babies long). (25.8)
Amy McAllister started her set with “Toilet Troubles”, about a break-up triggered by a boyfriend pooing at her house, using deliberately childish rhymes to mask underlying complex issues. Her second piece, “Burn”, was far superior, a sad, sweet poem which related a break-up in the present to her childhood propensity for burning herself accidentally. (27.2)
Adam Kammerling’s tale of being stopped by the NYPD for drinking in public was accessible, went down well, and ended the night on a good-natured, comical note. (28.3)

Final scores: Bristol 104.8, Hackney 106.9

Winner: Hackney. (The less-consistent Bristol still provided some great highs)

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Dan Holloway, Helen Smith, International Women's Day, Lucy Ayrton, Mrs Price's Parlour, Oxford International Women's Festival, Paul Askew, performance poetry, poetry, Tina Sederholm, Verity Heir

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 27^th to the 30^th 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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Poetry in the Parlour – Oxford International Women’s Festival

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