Extreme Nerd

 

Chess Boxing. Perhaps the ultimate sport. Two gentlemen challenging each other, brain and brawn, in alternating rounds of speed chess and physical combat. It's either sheer stupidity or utter genius.

Imagine my excitement, then, as the tenth anniversary Japanese Poetry Boxing regionals started heating up. And my disappointment upon discovering that there was plenty of the 'poetry', and absolutely bugger all of the 'boxing'. Think Speakers' Corner, sans crazies; Slam Poetry, sans 'slam'. Two enraged poets, one boxing ring, a clamouring audience … and not a fleck of blood. Not even the hyped verbal violence of freestyle rap battles.

At least the chaps at Raw Edge know a thing or two about marrying creativity with somatic struggle. They're enlivening this year's Ledbury Poetry Festival with an overnight trek across the Malverns, their foolish followers conjuring fragments of verbal perfection from the dregs of their physically exhausted, sleep-deprived brains.

With the London Literature Festival just around the corner, perhaps we need something special to make it stand out even further from the Hay-on-Wye-Bothers. And I propose alternating rounds of blades and ballads; slapsies and cinquains; haiku and kung fu…

Poetry boxing.
Scathing rhymes and flailing limbs,
My opponent yields.

Next!

London Literature Festival - July 5-19, South Bank, SE1
Extreme Poetry Workshop - 11:15pm, July 12 Meet at Church La, Ledbury, HR8 £15
London Chess Boxing Club

by AC