Location: Artch Arch 11, Gales Gardens (Under Bethnal Green Rails by Bethnal Green Tube Station
The Lowest Score... Wins.
The anti-slam challenges great performance poets, to write the worst poems that they can imagine, and perform them... well. . We think competition is overrated, actually, we celebrate FAILURE!!!
We launched in bar called S.I.N in Berlin, on July 1st 2009. We stumbled back three months later to an underground ping-pong bar in September. We returned last February to protest Valentines day with the worst love poems... ever (who knew heartbreak could be so funny?)
As friends in Poland began their own event in Warsaw, Friends in London struck back with their own brand of poetic anarchy in ARtch in East London.
The Anti-Slam is back to protest Valentines day again, this year running events in London and Berlin AT THE VERY SAME TIME!!! .
The Anti-SLam London ANti-Valentine's Day Special hosted by: Raymond Antrobus and Captain of the Rant
If Pete The Temp ruled the world it would be squeezed between his chest and arms in a giant metaphysical man hug.
If Pete The Temp ruled the world the C Word would be "Classism".
If Pete The Temp ruled the world he’d sell a lot of CDs.
Every now and then you pick up some roadie stories as a travelling artist and one of my favorites involves the day I met Pete. We were on the same bill at a Festival in Cambridge and Pete had a late set. As festival audiences go the later you’re set the higher chances of a drunken and disorderly audience.
Pete launched into a poem and some disgruntled, pink-eyed drunk woman in the audience barged onto the stage and wrestled Pete. Unable to get Pete on the floor she decided to jump on his back while Pete (without stopping his performance) punched his poem out his panting lungs. He completed his set carrying the woman off stage on piggyback…
Pete The Temp instantly became my hero.
Q. So Pete, you’re a temp?
I graduated with an arts degree and consequently spent my early twenties as a temp. Much of my early work was workplace satire. The Temp part of my name is about solidarity with the underdog. It is for everyone who believes that there is more to life than mindless work that devalues people as human beings, pays them fuck all and channels all their productive time into menial tasks that make a small minority of people rich. You know those vans, that drive up to dusty roadside junctions near the Mexican boarder to pick up men and children desperate for half a days work? That's the same thing as a temp agency. I have spoken to countless people who find an escape from this in writing and performing. By laughing at it and poking fun at it we can make something positive out of something negative.
I used to do human rights work in Colombia where standing up for yourself as a worker can lead to assassination at the hands of a death squad. Workers there are at the sharp end of the same system – one that values profit over people and seeks to trivialise and casualise employees. The temp thing is also an expression of solidarity with them. But no, I’m not a temp, I haven't been for years. I'm now a corporate lawyer.
Q. I thoroughly enjoy the social commentary in your poems but does poetry and politics have a good relationship?
My big mouth is my gift. It is my duty to channel my creative energies into making a song and dance about what I believe to be important. Historically poets have always been a bit subversive. Poetry engages you intellectually and creates arenas of public discussion and critical thinking. It could be about sexual politics, relationship politics or politics politics. People who prefer to spend their evenings in these environments rather than watching TV are less likely to accept what 'The Man' tells them.
I am currently working on a spoken word stage show: 'Pete the Temp verses Climate Change! We are in the process of finding people and venues interested in hosting it. The aim of the show is to get people talking about climate change and laughing at the same time. While the mouths are open you can throw in some food for thought. Q. You teach performance poetry. How do you teach someone to become a good Spoken Word poet?
Games are an important part of the creative process and are missing from the school curriculum. De-constructing the text of John Hegley and Benjamin Zephaniah from books is not enough to spark young imaginations to engage with 'spoken word'. A large proportion of the workshops we carry out at Hammer & Tongue are warm up games, improvisation games, rap battles and mini – competitions. Games are fun. They engage your body and get blood pumping to the brain which releases endorphins and sparks creativity. I believe this is how we can bring the words to life, get people performing and resurrect the oral tradition.
Q. You sing and play guitar and you have a lot of call and response material in your performance catalogue. Do you feel poetry on its own is never enough to engage your audiences? You can do anything on a spoken word stage – satire, music, character acting, audience participation. I’ve even got away with doing sketch comedy once. The call and response stuff creates a nice dialogue between audience and performer. For every ego on stage there are another twenty in the audience. When it comes to the guitar, stand up poetry has masses of musicality in it already – even without an instrument. Imagery and metaphor is important but that is not to say that it cannot be brought to life! I don’t think that there is any less 'content' or 'writing' in heavily performative poetry – it is just that the pieces are designed to have different effects on the listener.
Q. You were born and bred in Oxford right? When I think of Oxford I think of the place that isn’t Eton or Cambridge University but it might as well be. How the hell did you become the public menace you are?
I exist in the badlands of Oxford. I eat rats in tunnels below the colleges and periodically jump out to eat rich people with my fingernails and teeth.
Q. You’ve performed all over the country how do your audiences vary and what does this teach you as an artist?
Being a performer has given me the great privilege of backpacking round my own country and experiencing new places and people. Poetry is about community as much as it is about words and spoken word audiences are unlike any other – open minded, attentive, aware and friendly. Each venue, night and point in time has its own demographic and its own vibe. The challenge for me is to tap into this and to orchestrate the right set for that particular audience.
Q. Are the rumors true? Do poets die poor?
Someone once said “there is no money in poetry, but then again, there is no poetry in money.” Bollocks! There are too many fantastic performers out there who are not getting paid for the professional work they do. This is not the case in other branches of spoken word like stand up. It doesn't have to be this way. In France and Germany poets regularly perform to audiences of 400 plus. Not all nights have a budget to pay performers and that's fine. Poets in the UK do after all operate in a small artistic economy but this is changing all the time. People are waking up to the fact that poetry can move you, inspire you and even get you singing along. How many poetry gigs have you been to where people are like “Wow! I never knew poetry could be like that!”?. I don't know any poets who want to be rich but they do want to be able pay their rent. Valuing our work as poets is part of the task of changing public perceptions of poetry. If you are a poet and someone asks you to do “a reading during the interval” - decline the offer!
Q. Pete, I love your work and you’re a top bloke... I’d give you a permanent contract any day!
I'd be your office bitch any day my friend. Keep up the good work.
Anis Mojgani is one of the world's leading Spoken Word artists... quite frankly.. he's incredible and a master of our time... watch how its done.
incredible right?
now let me show you how it's not done... I've seen biters before... but rarely as blunt as this..
Push (2009)
wow!
This made me think about a story someone told me about what happened to North-Essex based poet 'Luke Wright'.
At a open mic, some guy gets up and blows everyone away with a poem... a poem that he'd heard Luke Wright perform and he'd wrote it down and tried to pass it off as his own work... HOWEVER, in the audience a friend of Luke Wright JUST so happened to be there and gave Luke a call... Luke then drives down to the venue and makes the guy get on stage and admit he's a big phoney...
I first met him at a poetry slam where he was disqualified for using props – I thought he was a genius straight away and felt his disqualification was part of the act. Once you made it into my books as a genius you get a license to get away with anything in my world- a bit like Phillip Seymour Hoffman when he gets an unlimited arts council ‘Genius’ grant in the film 'Synecdoche New York'...
Rob Auton is from York!
He was at PoeJazzi recently and I took a CD off him. I loved the way it was packaged in a little cardboard slip, stapled together with a child like drawing of what looked like a whale with a beak and little wings – bless him.
The CD was brilliant – 21 short satirical poems and short stories–
“I can tell by the look of her cat that she doesn’t like cats I can tell by the look of her dog that she doesn’t like cats”
There was also a poem about a car spotter.
“I am a car spotter, my favorite type of traffic is jam”
I call this genius and that might make me a dunce! Who knows?
Q. Rob Auton, how are you, who are you and should we care?
I'm OK thanks. I'm writing this in the heart of an Internet cafe in Walthamstow. Not a hot drink in sight. There is however a vending machine, it's full but the light is off. Does that mean the drinks are luke warm? Yes, yes it does. 14 minutes of my 50p hour have passed.
Q. Are you comfortable with being called a Spoken Word poet? Do you see yourself this way?
Are you calling me a spoken word poet? If so, then yes I am comfortable with it. Nobody has ever called me that to my face. My iPod batteries have just run out. So I can now hear the tapping of these keys, and people talking on skype. The guy next to me is talking to his girlfriend, I can see her, but she can't see me. Or can she? No she can't. I’m not looking again. They are having a private conversation, what better place to have it than in an Internet cafe?
Q. What’s your work ethic as a poet/ writer and performer?
If I have an idea, I write it in my notepad or into my phone, whichever is in my pocket at the time. If it's an idea that I like and it keeps poking me in the centre of my forehead throughout the day, then I will work on it when I get home, or on my lunch break. Sometimes things work on themselves, other times I've got to do it. I like the ideas that come like ready meals and I've just got to heat them up with as little effort as possible. I want to get as much stuff down as as I can so I can go back to it and see if it is rubbish or not. Is that an ethic? I want to put things in people's heads that are not already there.
Q. How do poets make money?
Working in art shops in soho.
Q. You run a night called ‘Bang Said The Gun’? Is it successful by your own standards and what would you advise on someone who is starting out their own poetry night?
Since Bang Said The Gun went weekly in February it has really started to fizz. I jumped on the Bang wagon after it had been going for ten years, by that time, the guys that started it had cemented the spirit of it to have real guts. We keep trying to build it and add things every week to keep it fresh. I think you have got to have the audience at the front of your mind all the time, you can't put on a poetry night for you it has to be for the audience. Not that I put it on, I help to put it on. I think it’s important to be part of a team of people that you share a goal with.
Q. What is the future of poetry? Is there one?
The future of poetry is the people who feel the need to comment on this thing that we have all been born into. I remember one of your status updates saying something like "a lot of people have died in the past, we are the small few who are alive." It's true you know, all the people who are alive now, it's like we are on the front of a really wide train powered by the past and we are all clinging onto the front with the wind in our faces travelling into the future. Say you had a black rectangle that was 50 meters long and 5 meters high we would be the yellow millimeter at the right end. The future of poetry is people feeling that thing of going, ‘YEEEEAHH come on lets have it, pass me that pen, I want to WRITE about this stuff that going on’.
Q. As a poet are you under-rated or more so misunderstood?
I didn't consider myself to be either until now.
Q. Is your poetry consciously outrageous or have I just insulted you?
I don't think my poetry has ever caused outrage. I got an old woman in a brief loving headlock on the tube after a large amount of Tequila, that was outrageous behavior that I regret.
I've been doing this for 51 minutes.
Q. Where do you see yourself tomorrow?
I will be in the art shop at 8am dealing with a Daler Rowney delivery. Tomorrow as in the future, I will be having ideas, seeing if I like them, then seeing if other people like them.
Q. Rob – your stuff is brilliant – you know that right?
