Self Roast 2018

Our first event was amazing. Poetry Club was setup to provide unique and alternative poetry events in Plymouth and last night, we certainly did that! The first half was an open mic where local writers shared work they weren't overly happy with (some had written about bad poetry as well). What came out of the first half was an uncomfortable, awkward feeling and it set the mood perfectly! Following the break we set up the writing competition prompt which went down horribly (ask Olivia Templeton!) The prompt was to write a deliberately bad poem that used features such as oxymorons, misnomers, grammatical errors, swearing, cliche, and general randomness. What came out of it was a series of very different, slightly oddball, poetry. In fact, William Telford (our judge) said he found it really difficult as some of the stuff was really good! He asked the question, 'Are you even able to write a bad poem?' 

​The performances were hysterical and the whole room erupted with laughter at each one. It was a brilliant burst of creativity that was well out of the comfort zone of everyone in the room. Three winners were chosen and received our mad prizes! Olivia Templeton took third place and won herself a tin foil baking tray, Sue Smith came second and grabbed a lovely, glittery unicorn money box, but our foul mouthed winner in the end was Sally Wilson. Sally took home a framed picture of Kenny Knight's book 'A Long Weekend On The Sofa' and our coveted Self Roast cup (which was completely broken and smashed). Thanks to everyone who came, thank you to Dan Morgan for co-hosting with me, William Telford for judging our competition, and of course Bekah at The Mad Merchant for hosting us and providing refreshments!

Roll on our next event!

(Oh, and the wristbands went down a treat!)

Video contains swearing/adult content.