Hammer and Tongue is back for a brilliant mix of spoken word and rap excellence, with another chance to get into our regional final in the open mic slam.

Featuring poet Rosy Carrick and rapper/producer Vociferous Sly.

Hosted by Sam Berkson and Sam Siva.

Rosy Carrick

Rosy Carrick is a writer, performer and translator, and give talks, lectures and performances of her work at events and festivals around the world. For seven years (until Dec 2015), she ran and compered Brighton's Hammer & Tongue poetry events, and has been co-host of the Latitude festival poetry stage (now The Speakeasy) since 2010. She also regularly hosts and performs on other UK festival poetry stages including Glastonbury and Festival No. 6, and is co-curator, alongside Luke Wright, of the Port Eliot festival poetry stage.

Rosy has a PhD on the poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky, and has released two books of his work in translation: Volodya (Enitharmon, 2015) and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Smokestack, 2017). In 2017 she curated and performed at events on Mayakovsky and radical political poetry for both Latitude and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

This year Rosy’s critically acclaimed solo theatre show Passionate Machine (directed by Katie Bonna and funded by Arts Council England) won Best New Play at Brighton Fringe and The Infallibles Award for Theatrical Excellence at Edinburgh Fringe.

She will be performing poems from her debut poetry collection Chokey, published earlier in June 2018 by Burning Eye Books.

“Clever, funny, quarrelsome, querulous, astonishing!” Sabotage

‘Surprising, audacious, original. Superb – ★★★★ ’ Edinburghfestival.org

Vociferous Sly

Vociferous Sly is a Croydon-based rapper,  producer, musician and educator. Whether delighting audiences with slick lyricism and inimitable flow,  or composing, producing, recording and performing his own music and visuals, Sly is a force to be reckoned with. Described as 'one of the most exciting omni-creative talents to emerge from the outer reaches of South London' , this is a night not to be missed, with an exclusive preview of lyrics from his debut mixtape ‘The Trials and Tribulations of Vociferous Sly’, (due for release in 2019).