Islington’s Literary Death Match

Last Tuesday, Islington’s Old Queen’s Head played host to London’s first Literary Death Match, an event where words weren’t wasted and sentences shone.

You’re probably wondering what a literary death match is. Do members of the public beat each other  with different volumes from Tolstoy’s War and Peace? Do they make remarks so cutting that the only possible response is to curl up and wait for the reaper?

The truth is less violent but equally imaginative.

The premise of the LDM, created by Opium magazine’s Todd Zuniga who has been running them in San Francisco and New York since 2006, is that four writers representing different writing organisations go head to head over two rounds. They read eight minute sections of work to three judges who evaluate what they have heard on literary merit, intangibility and performance before deciding, in raucous fashion, who goes through to the final.

Stepping up to the mike on this momentous occasion were, in the first half, Tim Wells (Pen Pusher Magazine)  and Joe Dunthorne (English Writer’s Club). In the second half came Amber Marks (Book Club Boutique) and Nick Harkaway (BBC Radio 3). They read from books, poems and, in one case, a rap with subject matter ranging from glasses that won’t steam up to an exploration of the question, do sheep in war zones evolve survival intelligence?

The final, which has previously involved lasers, was a game of cards where, instead of traditional images, the card faces displayed famous writers. I couldn’t work out whether there were rules or whether it followed in the deliberately obscure footsteps of Mornington Crescent but either way, Amber Marks walked away with the victor after trumping Joe Dunthorne’s Salman Rusdie (6 of hearts) with a Seamus Heaney  (7 of diamonds). After being let down by Rushdie, Dunthorne said: ‘I will launch my own fatwa, I will track him across the earth.’

The highlights of the night,  apart from the general good time buzz, came from two sources. Joe Dunthorne (author of  Submarine, a book which has been described as ‘A Serious Incident…meets Skins‘)  read out a rap called Raise Your Status which featured such lines as ‘If you’re studying for a Sustainable Development Doctorate/if you’re a junior partner in a multinational conglomerate/if you can throw a tennis ball a really long way/then make sure everyone can hear you say/Raise Your Status’ and which ended with the crowd yelling every other line, at his request, ‘you’re still gonna die’.

Less morbid were the hosting skills of the silver-tongued Todd Zuniga who tossed out witticisms at the rate of a howitzer and ran on the sort of chilled-out confidence that means that a) you can get away with anything, including mild drunkeness, and b) you’re probably American. Personality can get one extremely far with no real cause, yet I can’t think of a better use for the motor of charm than to promote talented writers using creativity and hilarity.

More please.

The Literary Death Match will return to London in September. It took place at:

The Old Queen’s Head
44 Essex Road
Islington
N1 8LN

Todd Zuniga edits Opium magazine