For me, being onstage at Twisted Tongues is probably the most comfortable I am ever whilst performing. Twisted Tongues was the first ever spoken word event I attended back in my first year of university, and when was the only event I would perform at when I was still finding my feet in the spoken word community. The team and the crowd are very supportive of new and inexperienced performers.
I began performing there back in September 2016 and by September 2017 I found that I had improved at a rate of knots due to the support from the crowd. It was only as of the dawn of my second year at university that I began to pursue performance at other venues to learn from other artists, as advised by someone who later became a mentor for me as a slam poet; Jamie Thrasivoulou! He told me back at the start of October last year. He advised me that the best way to ensure that I continued to improve at a steady pace would be to expand the venues that I have performed at - for example, as of September 2017, I had performed at Twisted Tongues, Poetry Speaks' Intro To Freshers' Event, She Speaks and LGBQWERTY. But as of the end of October, I had also performed at Co-Conspirators, Subverse, City-Zen and Word Wise! These new spaces gave me the opportunity to experience a variety of different performance styles! If I hadn't acquired such great advice I wouldn't have made the slam team. But more importantly, if I had never performed at a Twisted Tongues event and been validated by such a supportive crowd, I doubt my poems would have developed from sounding like the 'woe is me' declarations of a Tumblrina instead of the better-formed creations of a newly established slam poet! So I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jamie, as a supporter of Twisted Tongues, and the Twisted Tongues Team for the belief and support you have given me since I began this journey!
I was beyond grateful, as part of Team Derby for UniSlam 2018, to get the opportunity to perform the pieces that we would have shown the other teams in the semi-finals, had we qualified. I was so glad to watch Aoife and Mole perform 'Call Me MH' at last! And I hope that should I qualify for Team Derby next year, we will be able to perform some of the other pieces we would have performed in this year's semifinals in our bouts next year, and show the other unis what they missed out on this year!
Performing at Twisted Tongues this time around was an incredibly emotional experience, the idea of how much I had accomplished managed to swallow me up.
I got to perform my solo during last night's Twisted Tongues, and finally, the words of our team captain finally began to make sense. Originally, she said that our pieces were written, not just for ourselves, but for that one person in the crowd, who needs to hear it more than you did. Last night a member of the crowd approached me to thank me for performing my solo piece about learning to move past suicidal thoughts.
The image above was taken by my friend Emma, and depicts me performing my solo! I am so glad I finally got to share it with an audience that have supported me from the get go! It was such a great experience and am so excited to keep performing in the upcoming days!
Thank you for reading!
And thank you for the continued support!
And remember:
Per Ardua Ad Astra!
- Imogen. L. Smiley!
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