Gig 8. We're slammin'...

Gig 8 (Aug. 30th) was the slam at the Dog and Parrot, near the centre for life. The last Thursday of the month is New Word Order's spoken word night, including the slam. It's a competition in which everyone does a two minute poem or routine, and three random judges from the audience grade on audience reaction, content and performance. The winner does a paid 20 minutes the following month. As a lot of people were away for Edinburgh and Summer Hols, there were only 4 contestants, me and 3 poets.

As a concession to what is mainly a poetry event I'd written a poem based on the old 'my dog's got no nose joke' and that was my first round attempt.
They're pretty strict about the 2 minutes so I was cut off before the end, and I thought I was out - but, as there were only 4 contestants, only one was dismissed each round so I scraped through.

For the next part I did my cowboy song, without the usual introduction, and got through again.

I hadn't expected to get this far, so as I progressed my performance was getting more shambolic. For the last round I did the earliest form of my Planet of the Apes material- and spent what felt like 30 seconds trying to remember how the song started. Luckily the other finalist was leaving for London and, knowing he wouldn't be back next month, finished with a 3 line poem -too short to justify a win.

So I won! The victory round can be a longer piece and so I read a poem which attempted to use all the legal two letter words which can be used in Scrabble. I'd intended this for one of the earlier rounds but it quickly became clear it would be far too long.

This NWO night is certainly worth a look, but it can be an odd one. It's principally a poetry thing, but there are no rules or definition of 'poetry' so stand-up, sketches, performance poetry are all welcome - sort of. The thing is there can be a little hostility in the air when too many comics tip the balance and end up winning the slam every week. The truth is, comedy is just much more popular than poetry- even, it seems, among an audience who have apparently come to a poetry based event. I'm sure NWO would never go so far as to ban comedy from the slam- but unless they do it's always possible a very good poet might loose to a pretty mediocre comic- just because comedy is so much more accessible and instant.

One option might be to create a comedy slam elsewhere to lure the comics away. I've heard of plans for a local gong show. Where comics speak until the audience signal their displeasure with a flag or buzzer. The problem is as the audience gets more drunk they may think it hilarious to buzz a comic before they even say a word. The slam seems to be a much fairer way of doing competitive comedy.