Bang Said The Gun, the weekly performance poetry phenomenon billed as being “for people who don’t like poetry”, and where the audience is encouraged to make as much noise as is physically possible, is launching an anthology, Mud Wrestling With Words, that is packed with big names, including John Hegley, Luke Wright, Kate Tempest, Hollie McNish, and Rob Auton, as well as Bang Said the Gun architects Dan Cockrill and Martin Galton.

Regular Bang Said the Gun nights are at the Roebuck pub in south-east London, where the anthology launch is being held on Thursday 12 September. They have also branched out into Manchester, featured on Channel 4, and earlier this year won the Saboteur award for best regular spoken word night. You can catch a distinct flavour of Bang Said The Gun on this YouTube video. 

Co-founder Dan Cockrill claimed: “We have dragged poetry kicking and screaming  into the 21st century.” Martin Galton added: “It’s like a rabid poetry mongrel, and we have captured the best of that and put it in the book.” The anthology is available from performance poetry publisher Burning Eye Books. 

The first Bang Said The Gun gig is said to have been held way back in 1998. Ten years later it moved to its current home at the Roebuck. In 2010 it went weekly, and in 2012 was featured on Channel 4.

In his introduction to the anthology Ian McMillan describes how it felt to appear at Bang Said the Gun: “I’ve done lots of gigs in all kinds of settings but I have to admit that, as the noise grew and grew until it nudged the cacophony barrier and then shattered it, I was a little nervous … I stood up to read after a thundering welcome that my family could hear back in Barnsley.”