Hammer & Tongue Cambridge ft Chris Parkinson
This event on 3rd March 2017 at 19:30 has past.
This event series is no longer running. It last took place on 2nd June 2017 at 19:30.
Open Mic Event
Contact: cambridge@hammerandtongue.com
Time for the next open round of the Cambridge Hammer & Tongue 2016-17 season... Spoken word artistry and competitive fervour. 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 since 2009, in the warm and wonderful surroundings of fabulous venue Cambridge Junction. Sign up as one of the eight to compete for a place in the Regional Final next September, become a judge, or just dive in and soak up the atmosphere and talent on display.
Hosted by Fay Roberts, a Cambridge-based poet, musician, and unrepentant geek.
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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 10 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.
3rd March 2017 at 19:30
Chris Parkinson is a poet, writer and troublemaker from Brighton, UK. He’s been writing and performing poetry for about twelve years, and has done hundreds of gigs including eight appearances at Brighton’s legendary Poets vs MCs event and four Hammer and Tongue UK grand finals, as well as performances at festivals including Glastonbury, Playgroup and Shambala. He’s written four books of poetry - “City Boy in Blind Stop Trauma” came out in 2008, followed by “Fashion Tips for the Last Days” in 2012, “Hard Working Families” in 2014, and “Find and Replace” in 2016.
In 2007, he set up the world’s first Poetry Brothel, a site-specific open-house giving punters the opportunity to enjoy a one-on-one reading from a poet of their choice. It was the surprise smash hit of Brighton Fringe 2007, and won an Argus Angel Award and the Latest Festival Award for Best Literature (beating Gordon Brown into second place). Subsequently, Poetry Brothels have been set up as far afield as Barcelona, New York, Chicago and Leicester.
In 2013, he ended up accidentally making the news due to some internet hoaxes - reports of a vortex to another dimension opening up on a residential street featured in outlets as diverse as The Sunday Times, The Argus and Have I Got News for You. Meanwhile, an advert appealing for a lodger prepared to dress as a walrus inspired the Kevin Smith film Tusk, which he went out to the States to help produce. It was a pretty weird year.
In 2014, his full-length solo show “Moonshine” won the Best Literature award at Brighton Fringe. He also teamed up with computer programmer and writer James Burt to produce MechaPoet, the world’s first rhyming robotic poet, which generates poems from whatever text you feed in. She’s still a work in progress, and has been in one poetry slam but she came second-last.
He currently live in Brighton. Other than poetry, his interests include tapirs, the internet as performance art, political minutiae, and detective fiction.
“acerbic – and very funny” - Huffington Post
“whirlingly imaginative ... sometimes baffling, sometimes transcendental” - FringeGuru
“bizarre sideburns’n’glasses schtick” – TheArtsDesk
“a madcap hoaxer with a deceptively meandering style of freeform verse” - Brighton Source
“Chris Parkinson is the best kind of situationist: someone whose poetic, comic oddity leaks unexpectedly into newspaper articles, anomalous photographs, classified ads and other areas of everyday life. He’s also a fine poet.”
To find out more, visit http://cdparkinson.wordpress.com
A poet that writes poems; about life, death, love, war and a load of stuff that goes on in-between. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0U9RtNGCxWj85Mg0TMV1aA
Price: £7.50. (£7.50 (Full Cost); £6 (Concessions); £4 (Slammers); more on the door)
Time: 7:30pm
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