Puckered Lips, Slammed

Photo courtesy of Jemima Laing (one of the slammers)

Wow. What a night.

Alexander Rhodes and Robert Garnham played excellent hosts for what was a truly brilliant showcase of South West poets. From Cornwall to Cardiff (and plenty of nooks in-between) all varieties of performers and wordsmiths rocked up to give us their best performance pieces.

I was one of three judges (along with JoJo Moreschi and Emma Twamley) and was given sole responsibility of judging the writing techniques used by each contestant.

In true teacher form I divided the points up into various possible features like narrative, rhyme or no rhyme , non cliche imagery, show not tell etc and included more contemporary features such as ambitiousness, breaks/twists, surrealism and abstract elements. This was all topped off with a juicy cherry I called 'gut' which drew on my reaction to lines (Did I laugh? Did I relate? Did I feel my cold heart roughly warm to a tepid pulp?) - Yes, all of this and yet it was still bloody hard to call it.

When someone is creative it should be celebrated but here I was judging the creativity and then showing the entire room what I thought. I attempted to channel the ghost of Craig Revel Horwood before realising halfway through the necromancer ceremony that he was in fact not dead. Instead I relied on my own senses. Luckily, there wasn't a single 'bad' poem in the mix. All of them were unique in their own way and it was great to hear each and every one.

​Personal favourites from the first round were the final two poems, Nick Kitto's poem about being middle class but wanting to be ghetto and Kat Savage's poem which was just beautiful.

Photo courtesy of Robert Garnham via the art of selfie.

After the break we came back for the last two rounds. The second round was excellent. Every poet who performed in the semi-final scored highly in writing. Cerys (hope I'm spelling that correctly) delivered an excellent poem that really struck a chord for me. Still, the poem hungry reaper, wielding his microphone-esque scythe, had to strike and cull the number down to just three. The three finalists, Jason, Jackie and Ross were absolutely brilliant performers. In the end there could be only one (don't sue Mr Lambert, please sir) and that winner was Jackie Juno. Jackie scored 90+ for her writing consistently throughout all three rounds and the ambition of her last piece, an A-Z interactive road trip poem, sealed her the £100 cash prize.

Photo courtesy of Mark Jones (one of the slammers).

​This event was a fantastic night and should become a fixture on the Plymouth writing scene.

To learn about the other events going on this week for the Plymouth Literature Festival just visit their website. My final stop this week is going to be hosting an open mic on a river. Can't wait!

Photo courtesy of Emma Twamley (one of my fellow judges).