Hammer & Tongue Cambridge featuring Adam Kammerling with support from Sam Berkson

Buy your cheaper advance tickets via Eventbrite: http://htc_march13-efbevent.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… 😀

Adam Kammerling cut his teeth at the open-mic cyphers and rap battles of the Brighton hip-hop scene. In 2007 he attended his first spoken word show, and since then has been performing his own brand of eclectic and delicious poetry across the UK and overseas. Weaving numerous voices through his own, he incorporates elements of poetry, rap, theatre and comedy to create immersive, engaging works that push the boundaries of performance poetry.
As a collaborative artist he has worked with the London Sound Painting Orchestra at Shunt, and members of the afro/ska/reggae/punk band, Animal Circus. He has performed at Glastonbury, Latitude, Big Chill and numerous other festivals. He has also done theatre shows in Soho and at Bristol Old Vic and has performed all over the South of England – solo and with his collaborative musical projects.

Adam delivers workshops in schools and has also worked with the London charities, Art Against Knives and Tender, and the Cambodian NGO, Tiny Toones, promoting spoken word and rap as positive and healthy forms of self-expression. Adam is the Brighton Hammer and Tongue Slam Champion 2010, the Hackney Slam Champion 2011 and the UK Slam Champion 2012.
Check him out on http://adamkammerling.co.uk/

And he’ll be supported by Sam Berkson – who did some of his growing up in Cambridge. His first ever poem was a punk piece of visceral disrespect composed upon hearing of the death of Linda McCartney and his first proper gig ended in a fight. Continuing from there he has been performing in UK and abroad regularly since 2002, often under the moniker of ‘Angry Sam’. He has featured at festivals including Latitude, Hay-on-Wye and Bestival, at gigs with the likes of John Hegley, Brian Patten and Kate Tempest at places including Queen Elizabeth Hall and been a visiting poet at KaosPilots international school, Denmark; Grant MacEwan University, Canada; and at the Landmine Victims’ Centre, Algeria. He has been Liverpool and Brighton Festival Slam Champion. His debut collection ‘Life in Transit’ is published by Influx Press. He hosts live slam nights for Hammer & Tongue in Hackney and the Re:Versed show on NTS radio. http://angrysampoetry.wordpress.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/

Fancy Slamming?

The rules for H&T slams are as follows:

Slammers are chosen at random from the sign-up list 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).

There are no limitations on style of poetry – a typical slam will see sonnets, blank verse, hip-hop, rhyming iambic pentametric couplets and more all cross the stage – and we’ve seen winners who’ve read their poems out from the written version (paper, kindle, phone, beermat) so, while there are advantages to learning your pieces off by heart, it’s not a requirement!

http://www.facebook.com/events/313157475472139/