Having never been to an event like this before, and being able only to draw from memories of Jonah Hill awkwardly forming staccato-ed emphasis on the name Cynthia, I had no realistic expectation for what a poetry slam was even going to be like. Save for my initial overwhelming awe at listening to people confess their intensely intimate thoughts and feelings to a small, yet crowded room, I was doubly awed at the way in which these thoughts were delivered.

Save for my initial overwhelming awe at listening to people confess their intensely intimate thoughts and feelings to a small, yet crowded room, I was doubly awed at the way in which these thoughts were delivered.

The concentration on tone, pitch and deliverance seemed as an exact an art as stand-up comedy, or political debates. After the initial open-mic segment, judges were chosen at random from the audience; an empty jar was passed around the room (watchers put money in every time they thought a performance was worth it); and the audience was hushed whilst singular voices threw out shrapnel-sized pieces of their view on the world at us, one at a time. One poem in particular, named ‘Splings’, concentrated on the struggles of growing up with dyslexia, another concentrated on the limitations and trappings of gender binary, and another on paying 30p for a piss in a train station toilet. The amalgamation of humor, haunting life difficulties, and buzz-word current affairs (Black Lives Matter, Feminism, Religion) made for both a stimulating and enjoyable evening: one that I will most definitely return back to again and again.

Emily Moscrop

 (Image courtesy of Spoken word society)