This month, we find ourselves outside the region and instead (when the trains aren’t on strike) down in the big smoke. Take a short walk from Oxford Circus on a first Friday of the month, you’ll find a regular spoken word event, nestled in a cellar bar under an Italian restaurant.
This is Verbal Discharge.
Host Brian Kelly describes Club Verbal Discharge…
“As fun as it is to spend hours upon hours speaking to your imaginary friends in their fictitious worlds, it’s also good craic to introduce them to walking-talking humans.
Club Verbal Discharge started as a way to share novels, stories, poems, songs and scripts in progress”
On the first Friday of each month they “get rather drunk and discharge a month’s worth of scribblings to a sympathetic audience”.
This regular night near Oxford Circus has been running now for 5 years, and the nights have spread to special events in Bethnal Green, Margate, Folkestone and Valencia.
You can find their events on Facebook and Meetup…
Regularity: Monthly
When: 1st Friday of every month at 7:00pm
Where: Perini & Perini, downstairs at Ponti’s Italian Kitchen, 5-7 John Prince’s St, London, W1G 0JN (w3w = ///cope.skinny.insert)
Approx. 3 minutes walk from Oxford Circus Underground station.
Disabled access: No
Bar: Yes
Cost: Free
Further details/Social Media: Verbal Discharge Facebook page or Verbal Discharge on Meetup
Verbal Discharge is the monthly live face of Insurgent Press. This is what Brian says about Insurgent Press…
‘The Velvet Underground didn’t sell many records, but everyone who bought one went out and started a band’ – Brian Eno.
“At the Insurgent Press we want to publish books that fire the imagination. Words that spark debate. Ideas that keep you in the bar long after you should have gone home. We are a press run by writers for writers. If what you’ve written gets our typing-fingers itching then we are interested in you”
You can find their books on Insurgentpress.com, at The All Good Bookshop, or at any Club Verbal Discharge event.
The All Good Bookshop also have their own excellent Spoken Word Open Mic night – 7pm on the last Thursday of the month, see their website for more details of this and other events.
Hopefully I will be featuring them in a future spotlight, but in the meantime you can find them at: 35 Turnpike Lane, Wood Green, London, N8 0EP (w3w = ///sentences.lasted.tent)
Whilst you’re here, why not read Spoken Word Spotlight March 2024 – Fen Speak, Ely
Click here for a full list with links to all the 2024 spotlights
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