It’s been a year. One whole earth year since Rhymes with Orange set up shop and started disseminating our lyrical service to the masses. To celebrate this mighty achievement, we are throwing a birthday party! It’ll be the usual Rhymes with Orange nonsense but with much more orange paraphernalia. We promise the following – Bunting (standard party behaviour), cake (standard party bahviour), FREE ORANGES (non-standard (exceptionally kind) behaviour) and more poetry than you can shake a lyrical stick at.

The open mic will be a bumper one, not least because among the prizes is an ORANGE SPACEHOPPER (cue audience *ooooooooo*s). We are excited to get a load of the open micers back that have graced our stage over the last year. They are the ones that have inspired us, kept us going and are the reason we are here – to help you get from page to stage.

So come to the night and help us celebrate – we are celebrating you, our audience, our faithful supporters, our orange shaker-enthusiasts, our poets, our comedians, our brave stage-goers, our limerick-virgins and limericks-pros, our Rhymes with Orange family!

Deets:
Bedroom Bar (upstairs in the comedy theatre)
66-68 Rivington St, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3AY
Doors 7pm, show 8pm
£5 in advance, £6 on the door

Finally, we’ll leave you with a few words about the night from some of our Twitter peeps and attendees* to persuade you that not coming on 18th June will be the worst decision you ever made:

@rhyming_orange Rhymes with Orange is bigger than Jesus, Jebus and Jeezy Creezy put together

— Raymond Williams (@DJungleFaceJake) May 23, 2013

“Rhymes with Orange makes me feel vital with life and creativity and in some way, has saved me” – R.Boudour

@rhyming_orange I will follow you wherever you go.

— Ryan Boudog (@r_boudog) May 23, 2013

“I thought it was going to be shit, but actually it was really good” – H.Winter

“Rhymes with Orange is the reason I am the man I am today” – Anand Modha (@Modhabobo), inventor of the term hypnorape

“Rhymes with Orange is the most fun you can have without lube” – Ellie “onesie” Dawes

*These were in no way harvested through leading questions or threatening tweets.

We have just added a new page to the website to tell you a little more about our comperes and resident poets. Go and check it out and read a little more about who we are.

People behind the rhymes

It’s been a little quiet on the blog lately so I thought I’d share with you a few of the things and people that inspire us. When I say ‘us’, I mean your monthly hosts and co-founders of Rhymes with Orange, one video from each of which I have shared below with a little explanation of why they get us going.

Buddy Wakefield – Human the death Dance

Chris Wolfe’s inspiration

‘This video is crap. it’s shaky, the audio is tinny, the quality is poor. And yet the liveness of the poem and the poet come through. It gave me the chills and ignited the light over a new path for my poetry.’ – Chris

Polarbear – Jessica

Kim Pryor’s inspiration

‘My boyfriend in High School sent me this video and I think it was my first introduction to spoken word. I watched in awe as Polarbear told stories in ways I had never heard with such lyricism and sincerity. He made me care about what he was saying and feel what he was feeling – he had me holding onto every word that fell from his mouth and I was all like, “I need to learn how to do that”.’ – Kim

Tim Minchin – Storm

Thomas Muirhead’s inspiration

“There are two main reasons why I love Tim Minchin’s STORM. The first is his approach to argument, to influencing people, to convincing people: it’s a powerful piece. The dialectic of conversation around a dinner party, as Plato showed in his Symposium (don’t worry I’m aware dropping Plato into this makes me sound like a wanker – but it was an important book for me – OK), uses a social situation which makes what could be dry, logical argument into an entertaining mechanism to outline illogical positions and tear them down. The second is that he does it with such charm, lyrical inventiveness and theatrical performance that it’s great even if you don’t agree.” – Thomas

Rob Auton – Leaves

Stevie Tyler’s inspiration

“I love this video because it pokes fun at itself and some of the overly sincere videos out there. The poem is both funny and tragic – something I am drawn to increasingly in my writing and which I think Rob Auton does very well. A sprinkle of the surreal makes it less intimidating to the listener and that’s what we’re all about at RWO. And god, I love Rob’s flat vowels” – Stevie