The biggest promoters of Slam Poetry in the UK, making champions from everyday people, handing the power of judgement to the poets’ peers, creating a democratic cutting-edge spoken word culture, reaching out to communities, organising workshops in schools, universities and prisons, Hammer And Tongue creates “the best live poetry” events in The UK in venues that you wouldn’t expect to see poetry to a hip hop and world music backdrop.

Steve was frustrated with the lack of gigs in Oxford, everything being either open mic things that weren't dedicated poetry nights or they appeared to be dull affairs and Steve was unimpressed with the London scene which he had moved to Oxford to be near having been a developing professional performer for ten years in the North.

As soon as Steve met Jim, he knew he'd been exposed to the sort of vibrant performance poetry that he loved, he was great. He’d travelled The States and got training from slam masters.

Steve had his number and called him out of the blue and said he wanted to put a night on, he'd found the ideal venue to start something off in, this was The Brickworks on Cowley Road, a small independently owned bar.

The thinking behind this was that a venue of that size would look full with 20 people in.

Our first night attracted about sixty people, it was hot, it was sweaty, it was an electric atmosphere, Soul Evans a slam champion from the United States mesmerised and inspired those sixty people who went away as converts to “slam poetry” or “performance poetry” with the first two rules of Hammer And Tongue drilled into them.

The first rule being:

“You talk about Hammer And Tongue”

and the second rule being:

“You talk about Hammer And Tongue”

They knew they were on to something. They attributed the early success of Hammer And Tongue to hard work on their part (and the fact that they could take their skill to other venues and demonstrate what poetry can do), to fantastic and innovative designs and flappy tongued posters made by local artist Stig, and the community of talented and conscious people in East Oxford who embraced the idea immediately. They also knew that to extend this any further and battle against “the P factor” (the fact that the word poetry automatically conjures up Arran sweaters and bearded men being dreary and serious), they needed to take advantage of the best advertising tool there is – word of mouth.

They’d booked up until Christmas being ready to foot the bill if the worst came to the worst but the audiences just kept growing and growing, they at first thought that they’d become temporarily fashionable and that the numbers of people would settle so they stayed at the same venue. They thought that maybe they relied on students but April’s gig with Mark Gwynne Jones, slap bang in the middle of their Easter holidays was the busiest they’d had with over eighty people cramming themselves into a tiny space. Somehow in May they got over a hundred people.

All out effort and generous support from Stax (Students Taking Action For Community Change) saw them take the formula to The Zodiac for The Big Slam where they attracted over 300 people who saw The Oxford Team that was made up of Hammer And Tongue slam champions beat Birmingham New October Poets and then narrowly loose to an extremely strong USA team led by Taylor Mali (six time US National Slam Champion).

Hammer And Tongue then moved permanently to the The Zodiac, which is a few doors up from the original venue. They launched with one of the biggest names in the UK scene Atilla The Stockbroker and followed up with the likes of TUGGST.A.R and Jean Binta Breeze as well as American favourites like Buddy Wakefield.

In October 2004 Steve was invited to Canada for the Spoken Word Olympics the Canadian version of The US Nationals where thousands gather every year for the biggest slam fest on the planet. There he saw off stiff competition beating a host of top American performers including former US Nationals champion Mike McGee to come away with the title of Spoken Word Olympic International Champion.

Now the UK poetry scene was on the international map and Hammer And Tongue were able to persuade some of the best in Canada and The United States to compete against an Irish team and a best of British slams team in the first ever Four Nations Slam.

This event was sold out The Zodiac with Four Hundred people crammed in to witness a breathtaking display of poetic ability, performance and culture; each nation’s poets bringing with them their own unique style and voice.

Since then Hammer And Tongue has launched in Brighton, London, Bristol and Cambridge.

Jim and Steve both live in East Oxford and are quite attached to the culture that has seen Hammer And Tongue become so successful, Jim still has a full time job with The ETC group campaigning against nanotechnology and GM and Steve works full time for Hammer And Tongue, the organisation that they set up.

Their work has now extended beyond promoting events, they are running writing and performing workshops for those that have been sat in the audience wanting to express themselves, Steve has been working in a category B prison and has presented the first “Slam In The Slammer” with the inmates of HMP Grendon. The fluid group poets are being used in education more and more. They have plans to make a film using the footage they have taken so far and to create a great interactive website that hosts the first ever poetry charts exposing people to the spoken word in the same way that people have been exposed to music. They also plan to unite all the people promoting spoken word in Oxford under one banner for a festival next year, so their work is cut out. This is all on top of the poetry career Steve and Jim are enjoying themselves, which so far has seen Steve share stages with great poets like Linton Kwesi Johnson, John Hegley and John Cooper Clarke, and Jim compete in The US Slam Nationals.