Hammer & Tongue Cambridge featuring Salena Godden

Open Mic Event

Contact: cambridge@hammerandtongue.com

Time again for another round of the Cambridge Hammer & Tongue 2010-2011 season...

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 Emperor. Sign up as one of the eight to compete for a place in the Regional Final, or just dive in and soak up the atmosphere and talent on display. And some great beer.

She’s back from a trip down-under (easy!) and she’s here for us at Hammer & Tongue! Strap yourselves in for the glamorously anarchic Salena Godden…

Notorious punk poet and raconteur Salena’s short stories and poetry can be found published in myriad of various magazines and anthologies. Her memoir, Springfield Road, was published by HarperCollins in 2009.

This London-based poet, broadcaster & performer is also the lead singer & lyricist for underground, eclectic ska-break band SaltPeter, with musician Peter Coyte. SaltPeter's latest album Hunger’s The Best Sauce featured in The Critical List in The Independent On Sunday as one of the most outstanding albums of 2007 and is best described as “the belly-rumbling of the skint, the scam, and the walk of shame, the morning after the night before and the fear of the night after that.”

She’s also collaborated and jammed with the likes of Alabama 3, Coldcut, Beardyman and Simple Kid to name a few…

Salena has a weekly residency and currently hosts and co-produces The Book Club Boutique, Soho’s regular literary salon, featuring the literary cream of page and stage and described by Murray Lachlan Young as “Long on talent, short on snobbery, grown up drinks with words you could dance to.” http://www.myspace.com/bookcboutique

And she’ll be brilliantly supported by Utter!’s “Ringmaster of the spoken word,” Richard Tyrone Jones. The genial ginger giant himself will be bringing us excerpts from his long-awaited one-man-show: “Richard Tyrone Jones Has A Big Heart”. This anecdotal epic consists of “strangely uplifting narratives of near-near death, convoluted convalescence and living with heart failure which might kill you, through anecdotery, cardi...omyopoetry and bisoproLOLs.” BBC Ouch! described the first reading as: “raw, at times graphic, and very funny” and the rest of us described it as bloody brilliant. http://www.utterspokenword.com

Hosted by Alex Iamb and Fay Roberts. Doors open at 7:30pm; entry is a paltry £5 full price, an even more paltry £3.50 for concessions, and a ludicrous £2 for slammers.

“The best live poetry is to be found at The Hammer & Tongue slams”
(The Sunday Times)

A poetry slam is a live democratic poetry competition where random members of the audience are made judges giving scores to a series of 3 minute spoken word performances with an Olympic-style score system.

“Hammer & Tongue have reinvented the medium for the hip hop generation”
(The Guardian)

http://www.hammerandtongue.co.uk/

Entry: £5/ £.50 concessions/ £2 slammers

Time: 7:30pm for 8pm start