Poetry Slam

This evening NC and I went to the delightful Birmingham Conservatoire (which makes our evening sound very cultured – do not fear it wasn’t too bad).

After listening to late night BBC Radio 4 last Thursday, we were informed that a (free) recording of the final of Poetry Slam was taking place in Birmingham on Tuesday. We thought that it’s always worth going to see free things, we had nothing planned and it would be lots of fun; so we ordered some tickets!

So first off, Poetry Slamming isn’t your high brow pompous poetry, it’s about not just letting poetry sitting in a book going yellow but about preforming it and making it real. The performance and poetry is judged out of 10 by a panel of judges and the best performer wins!

This one also turned out to be the first event in the Birmingham Book Festival 2009 which was quite exciting.

The evening started by a brief introduction by the producer who told us the rules. We were then warmed up by a Dreadlock Alien also known as Rich (and our MC for the show) and a Brummy called Spoz (who was somehow very familiar, but I know not from where and one our judges for the evening) and then the show started (well once all the poets got back from going to the toilet/bar!).

Dreadlock Alien had to take a couple of goes at getting the introduction right (so much so that he ended up doing it again after the first round of poems!) and it took forever to work out the scoring system enough for him to introduce it (and the annoying women in front never did seem to get the hang of it), but then the poems began.

There were 6 poets who told us poems about: their journey from London to Birmingham to be in the contest, a  Bi -cycle, a medicating lover, pygmies which live in his hair, the schizophrenic muse,  and a village of goblins – and that was just the first round!  A few taps of the casio circa 1970 calculator and it was deduced that four poets got through to round two. After the Alien’s take 5 at introducing the show and another round of poets toilet stops, round two began: we had a poem about replacing bullets with poetry (or rather why we are encouraging bullets at all whether literary or armoury), a rant about students (which I did not enjoy very much at all), a breakup over a cheese fondue and about Belfast (a city made of angles)…

After the second round there was a dead heat so with some swift calculating the winner was revealed and the right one won, though I’m not allowed to tell you who it is so you’ll just have to listen to the show – which is a lot shorter than the 2 hours we were there – on Thursday, Radio 4, 11.02pm.

The winner then treated us to a delightful poem satiring the M&S advert though it wouldn’t have been allowed to corrupt the ears of Radio 4 listeners  – This is not just food…this is S&M food!

It was a most enjoyable way to spend an evening and I’d recommend it highly if you ever get the chance to watch a Slam.

Lunch

I’ve spent today trying to eat my way through a tuition fees worth of food at a Postgraduate Welcome Lunch, that’s a lot of spring rolls and unidentifiable sandwiches!

It was supposed to give us the opportunity to meet academics from our course and to get to know other people who were studying it – unfortunately none of the psychology lecturers must like free food, and the only person on my course who was there didn’t seem to want to do anything but send text messages, so I made friends with all the Biomedical Science students who were far nicer…ah well at least I got free food!

Back to School

This week I went back to University again. This may be the third time I’ve started a degree but it was nonetheless a petrifying experience – what if they don’t like me? What if I trip up and fall on my face and everyone points and laughs?

It wasn’t too bad to be honest,and the people on my course all seem lovely. The only slight problem is that because my course is a postgraduate course but taught alongside the undergraduates we got lumped into all the welcome stuff, but haven’t actually been told anything because we’re aren’t undergraduates! So I was shown how to use a self service machine in the library, but they didn’t bother to tell us about accessing journals; and the lady at enrollment seemed a bit stunned that I had 2 degree certificates to show her (and her computer crashed with the shock!), but I’ve not been told anything about any of the Welcome Week Activities! I was traumatised by the fire safety lecture, where we watched a film of Bradford Football Stadium burning down with the companying commentary from the Fireman of “oh, that chap there’s going to die soon” and “just wait for the policeman’s hair to catch fire!”

Anyway, I now have a shiny new student card (which for some reason runs out in March 2011, though my course finishes in June 2010!), have access to a variety of new resources, a timetable for next week, and a lovely big pile of reading!  Hooray for being back at school.