Hammer & Tongue Cambridge featuring Steve Larkin with support from Leanne Moden

Order tickets via Eventbrite:http://htc_january13-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… 😀

Steve Larkin is an internationally respected spoken word artist, poet, performer, musician and educator. He is the founder of Hammer & Tongue, a university lecturer in performance poetry, storytelling and creative writing, and the front man of cabaret klezmer ska band Inflatable Buddha.

Since winning the title of International Poetry Slam Champion in 2004 he has become a firm favourite with poetry, theatre and fringe festival audiences from Scandinavia to North America. In 2010 he was nominated for Oxford Professor of Poetry.

Find out more at http://www.stevelarkin.com

And he’ll be supported by Leanne Moden – a poet and habitual rhymer who doesn’t take herself too seriously. Her poems have been described as surprising, hilarious and unsuitable for those with a heart condition. http://tenyearstime.blogspot.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 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 help 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/414995575237299/