PRESS NOTICE
31st Mar 2005 Brighton News Arts Community Photo desk
Poetry
For The Club Generation Hits Brighton
Event:
Hammer And Tongue
Time: Monday
4th April 2005, 7pm
Venue: The Fringe Bar, Kensington Gardens
North Laines
The phenomenon that is sweeping the Western
World known as “slam” poetry will be exploding on to the Brighton scene on
Monday promoted by the largest slam organisation in the UK Hammer And
Tongue. Slam, has been expanding in the
US and Canada for nearly twenty years, with thousands of people avidly
following their poetry idols progress across a network of events that has
launched the careers of artists such as Annie De Franco and Saul Williams.
A slam is a democratic poetry competition
where would-be spoken word stars are given three minutes on a microphone to
inspire the audience and scored by 5 randomly chosen judges to see who is the
greatest. Previous Hammer And Tongue
champions have gone on to perform at major festivals such as Glastonbury and
Womad.
Organiser Sam Berkson said “The brilliant
thing about slam is that anyone can sign up at the door do their thing whether
it be rap, hip hop, poetry… whatever, and the one that connects with the
audience best walks away a hero brimming with confidence. Some people take it seriously and others
just see it as a good laugh or an opportunity to try out their stuff and get
immediate feedback. I can’t get enough
of slam it’s revolutionising the spoken word scene in the country.”
Hammer And Tongue have been organising slams
in the UK for just under two years and have seen a meteoric rise in the
popularity of events with 400 strong audiences enjoying some of the best spoken
word artists from around the world. The
event on Monday will see a rapper-cum-poet from Toronto Leviathan make his UK
debut as one of the special guests along with Steve Larkin who boasts the title
of Spoken Word Olympic International Champion, which he picked up at one of the
major slam competitions at the end of last year in Canada.
Steve said “I’m really excited about this gig,
Brighton has got just the right culture for slam poetry to thrive, in my
experience people in Brighton seem to be open to new things, be ‘conscious’ and
be generally quite cool here. I reckon
that this launch could be the start of something massive in Brighton.”
This event will see Brighton favourite DJ
Larynx creating the vibe helping to make an atmosphere that is unique to a
packed out slam gig.
ENDS
Note to editors
1.
Hammer
And Tongue will take place on the first Monday of every month at The Fringe
Bar. This month April 4th doors 7 show
8-11. £4 / £3 conc.
2.
Details
of coming events and workshops can be found at web: www.hammerandtongue.org
3.
For
photos of slam activity or the performers see http://poeticdream.com/photo.htm,
visit www.hammerandtongue.co.uk,
www.stevelarkin.com or contact Hammer And Tongue.
4.
Recent
feature of Hammer And Tongue in Isis Magazine can be found at http://isis.ospl.org/?issue=MT-2004-1&article=11
5.
For
more information call 01865 200550 or 07787144059, email poetry@hammerandtongue.org
6.
What people
say about Hammer And Tongue:
Mark Gwynne Jones – UK performance poet:
“Hammer And Tongue must be one of the best community
oriented gigs in Britain. They have
created a living, breathing monster of poetry.
Where else can you stage dive at a poetry gig?”
Marcus Moore, long time UK Slam organizer wrote after
one of our events:
“Gentlemen, it
was wonderful. It was how all slams should be - alive, passionate, diverse,
wild, tense, tender, urgent... one moment a powering beast, the next
a floating feather. And throughout it was hosted with such finesse, with great
good humour and with the warmest arms of love.
You have
reached the hearts and hearing parts of many. I applaud you and I thank you for
all you are doing to make the world a better place.”
The following was posted on a
website called the Chronicles Of Naomi:
“well just been to the hammer and tongue 'poetry
slam' at the (absolutely packed) 'brickworks'
on the Cowley Road in Oxford …The poetry slam
was v. cool - there was a couple of black poets from NYC on tour who were amazing - funny, angry,
'paranoid' and gracious and then some local non-professional poets who were
entering the 'slam'.
The place was just full of such a cool bunch of really diverse people black,
white, young, old, a goodly smattering of eco-warrior/hippy types. I am definitely going back! I wish the
church was much more like that.”
Dawn Saylor, A touring US Slam Poet who performed at a
Hammer and Tongue event wrote the following on her website:
“Slam is alive and
healthy over here. Last night I was on a slam team with Joel Chmara, Derrick
Brown, and Taylor Mali. It was incredible. None of the backbiting or "I'm
gonna kick your ass", Is that a prop, is she going over-time? Nope. Just a
bunch of poets doing poetry that really matters to them. To say I had a good
time is an understatement. I would even venture to say that we all had the best
slam experience that we could have possibly had. It was incredible. A crowd of
at least 250 and 16 poets who were only there to share their words. There were
teams from London, Oxford, Birmingham, and the US. We won, yes. All of you slammers who are disenchanted
with slam lately, come to the UK. It's what I imagine slam was like in the
beginning. I want to move here.
“Poetry For
The Club Generation”