Hammer & Tongue Slam featuring Hollie McNish, with Stephen Morrison-Burke

Buy your cheaper tickets online at http://htc_february13.eventbrite.co.uk/
Time again for the next round of the Cambridge Hammer & Tongue 2012-2013 season… Spoken word artistry and competitive mayhem. What more could you want?

This is your chance to become part of the spoken word slam brilliance that has graced this here fair city for over a year, in the warm and wonderful surroundings of fabulous venue The Fountain. Sign up as one of the eight to compete for a place in the Regional Final next September, or just dive in and soak up the atmosphere and talent on display. And some great beer.

Tickets are a silly £5 full price/ £3.50 concessions/ £2 for slammers in advance and a frankly ludicrous £6.50/ £5/ £3 on the door. Doors are at 7:30pm; kick-off at 8pm. There’s also a bar upstairs… 😀

Hollie McNish is an internationally-renowned poet who has appeared on stages from tiny Cambridge pub rooms to Glastonbury Festival to a tour of Australia.
Her poetry influences span hip-hop, grime, and sixties protest songs, while her lyrics themselves span at least five languages. As well as performing her gorgeous poetry all over the country and running workshops and poetry demonstrations with not-for-profit organisation “Page to Performance”, she has played with drum ’n’ bass acts like Beardyman and Jungle Drummer, and was named a Great Briton in 2010!
Check out her work on http://holliemcnish.bandcamp.com/

And she’ll be supported by Stephen Morrison-Burke – an up-and-coming Spoken Word Artist from Birmingham. He has been performing for 18 months now and also teaches poetry workshops in youth offending units. In September 2012 he was the winner of the Cambridge Hammer & Tongue Season Final, and is the current Birmingham Poet Laureate. http://www.morrison-burke.com

Hosted by Fay Roberts.

“Hammer & Tongue have reinvented the medium for the hip hop generation”
(The Guardian)

“The best live poetry is to be found at The Hammer & Tongue slams”
(The Sunday Times)

Contact us on Facebook, or on cambridge@hammerandtongue.com or 07908 488009.

http://www.hammerandtongue.co.uk/

The rules for H&T slams are as follows:

Slammers are chosen at random to perform – spoken word only, no music, no props. Each competitor has 3 minutes from the time they start talking on the mic. After 30 seconds’ grace period, they start losing points (1 point for every 10 seconds!). At the end, they’re given points out of 10 by 5 judges chosen from the audience, while the top and bottom scores are removed to ensure fairness. The slammer gets a score out of 30, and the competition moves on.

The winner of that evening’s competition goes through to the Regional Final (the Cambridge one tends to be held in September), and the winner (and runner-up) of the Regional Final goes through to the National Final. The winner of the National Final gets crowned H&T National Slam Champion and can then go on to compete in things like the Radio 4 slam championships, the international slam championships, etc.

Aspirant competitors can sign up either by rocking up as doors open on the night (typically 7:30pm for an 8pm start) or by booking slam tickets in advance online (£2 from Eventbrite – the relevant link is above). You can “express an interest” by emailing your name in advance, but that only gets you on the reserve list until you pay on the door (£3).

http://www.facebook.com/events/411200795616589/