Books & Spoken Word
Hammer & Tongue ft. Toby Campion & Claire Guest
Monthly open poetry slam night hosted by Hammer & Tongue with headline acts Toby Campion and Claire Guest.
Toby Campion is a UK National Poetry Slam Champion and a World Poetry Slam finalist. Recipient of the Silver Wyvern Award and First Place in the Poetry on the Lake Prizes 2017, awarded by Carol Ann Duffy, Toby has performed his poetry on stages across the UK, from Glastonbury Festival to London’s Royal Albert Hall, and in countries around the world, including America, Italy, Spain, Albania and South Korea. His debut play, WRECK, won the Fifth Word Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright 2015.
Claire Guest is a poet/ chemical engineer freshly graduated (by the time this is out she hopes!) from the University of Bath. She has performed at a variety of events, including the Bath and Cheltenham Literature Festivals, and Edinburgh Fringe. Claire was the Birmingham Young Poet Laureate 2012/2013. She has recently set up a poetry group at university, and took the first ever Bath University team to UniSlam this year.
is needed now More than ever
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 Bristol one is in June), 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.
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