RHYMES WITH ORANGE
“One of the best spoken word nights in London” - Evening Standard
Come see us on Thursday 3 April 2025
Theme: Fools
Get 3rd April in your diary right now to come and join us in Ethika, our new home at Mercato Metropolitano in Elephant & Castle, London.
We’ll be performing on the theme of Fools, it being April and all, and we can’t wait to hear your limericks and see who will win the Open Mic competition.
Open mic is already sold out (if you want to be on a future open mic, get on our mailing list, as they are always first to hear about tickets going on sale.)
Come on down and bring your mates. You’ll have an ace night, we promise.
Rhymes with what?
“One of the best spoken word nights in London”
Rhymes With Orange is a high energy, Time Out and London Evening Standard-recommended spoken word night which celebrates new writing.
We performed with Underbelly at Edinburgh Festival Fringe for three years running, as well as on stages at Latitude, Standon Calling Festival, VAULT Festival and Margate Power of Women festival.
It brings us a lot of joy to see our audience members get up on stage to perform in our Limerick Challenge, and the Open Micers always blow us away. It's a super fun night, and we’re thrilled to be bringing it back for 2025. We can't wait to see you there.
“More like a stand up comedy night than poetry.”
“More fun than I’d expected”
Come to Rhymes! Future dates
Thursday 9 October 2025
Location: Ethika, Mercato Metropolitano, Elephant & Castle, London
Theme: We’ll figure it out nearer the time, October is ages away
How to get tickets:
Sign up to our newsletter
Get the ticket email
Buy tickets immediately the second you get the email (this especially goes for Open Micers as our Open Mic tickets are like gold dust/unicorns/hen’s teeth/Ubers in a rainstorm. You get the picture.Get the tickets too)
Tell your mates and get them to come with you
Come along and have a fab time
What happens on the night
6.30pm - Doors open at our venue, Ethika in Mercato Metropolitano near Elephant & Castle (Ethika is a large tent within the venue, and also, usefully, a cocktail bar). You will be handed a shaker to show your appreciation, so flex those shaking muscles.
7.30pm - Show begins with one hour of six featured performers each doing a 10 minute set of spoken word on the theme of the night.
8.30pm - Limerick Challenge. The entire audience is heartily encouraged to pick up a pen, write and limerick and get on stage to read it out. The winner is chosen by a clap-o-meter judge and awarded a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. Terry’s are not a formal sponsor of this event but to be honest they’ve done so well out of us over the years, they bloody well should be.
9pm - Open Mic begins. This is judged as a competition with our trusty clapometer system. Six open mic ticket holders each have the chance to get up and read one poem. The winner gets a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and the chance to join us in the featured section for a 10 minute set at the next Rhymes.
10/10.30pm - Ends
Featured
performers
Kimberley Montgomery
Kim has been storytelling in verse for decades. Having a BA in Creative Writing, being co-founder of Novlr and having written poetry since she could write, Kim's passion for wordplay knows no bounds. Catch her at a Rhymes night for humour, nostalgia and lyrical smarts.
Stevie Tyler
Stevie has written poetry since should hold a pen, and is inspired by the big themes in her life. Motherhood, adulthood, love, and watching people closely. Her writing ranges from the thoughtful and sincere, to total filth. She lives in Margate, sometimes writing, and often jumping into the sea.
Colin Nelson
Colin lives in Scotland but he makes a pilgrimage to London to perform every sometimes. He is a horrible man who writes horrible poems about horrible things.
Ellie Dawes
An Edinburgh festival reviewer once described Ellie's poetry as "thoroughly millennial", which at the time (2016) felt like a compliment. She's been doing poems with Rhymes for well over a decade and got a husband out of it so it's been officially confirmed: her poetry brings all the boys to the yard. Her compering style ranges from shouting "this is not about you" at the audience, to crying happy tears when someone nails their first ever open mic.
Laura Rae
Laura is a poet and creative facilitator from Hull. She has delivered workshops in schools, shelters, charities, colleges, prisons, theatres, festivals and factories. Rhymes with Orange is the most fun she has ever had on stage.
Carl Burkitt
Carl Burkitt likes telling tales. He tells long tales, short tales, silly tales, sad tales and likes to tell them online, behind a mic, in books, in schools, and on the sofa with his young family. His debut poetry collection, What Does A Baby Think It Is?, was published in 2020.
Athos Athanasiou
Athos writes fantasy, sciencey, spacey, scifi poetry with a dancey feel. He has performed his poetry at Latitude, New York, Hay, Standon Calling, and on a stage outside Parliament in front of 5000 people (one week after the brexit vote).
Athos’s ideal holiday is hiking up a mountain to dance on a beach in a small city with some theatre.
Rachel Malham
Rach is one of the founding members of Rhymes, and loves pulling faces and showing off her epic memory of 80s and 90s pop culture.
Her poetry is playful and poignant and she is always trying to make you laugh and cry.
Simon Moriarty
Simon is a spoken word and stand up comedy performer who has been Rhyming With Oranges since 2016, and has performed at comedy clubs across London.
He has a borderline obsessive need to include puns in everything he does. Weirdly, he can't pronounce the word 'flipper' normally.
How Rhymes was born: the Rhymeline
If you’ve seen us before and geek out on details like we do, here’s a little trip down Memory Lane…
2012
A group of writing-inclined work colleagues drunkenly dare each other to host their own spoken word night, ‘just once, to get it out of their system’ (HA!) after they all tried - unsuccessfully - to get on the open mic list of Another Spoken Word Night.
On 13 June 2012, Rhymes was born in the little room above Star of Kings, King’s Cross. It was hotter, sweatier and funnier than anyone had expected.
The audience literally asked for more, and we couldn’t say no. We were unstoppable…until a global pandemic stopped us. Now we’ve had a long sleep and few cups of tea, we can hear that shaker shimmy calling us again…
2013-14
Monthly residency at Bedroom Bar, Shoreditch. Havant Literary Festival 2013 & 2014
2015
Monthly residency at Bedroom Bar, Shoreditch, Edinburgh Fringe Show #1 at Udderbelly Cowgate
2016
Our monthly residency at Bedroom Bar, Shoreditch ends in December with our Christmas show. In summer we perform at South Downs Poetry Festival and Edinburgh Fringe Show #2 at Udderbelly Cowgate
2017
Show at The Macbeth, Hoxton. Monthly residency at Farr’s School of Dancing, Dalston. South Downs Poetry Festival, Standon Calling, Edinburgh Fringe Show #3 at Udderbelly Cowgate
2018
VAULT Festival. Monthly residency at Farr’s School of Dancing, Dalston
2019
Monthly residency at Horse & Stables, Lambeth. We perform on The Speakeasy stage at Latitude.
2020
Pandemic of doom. Our show at The Curtain, Shoreditch is cancelled. Facebook live shows.
2021
Our sold-out comeback show at Iris Theatre Covent Garden is cancelled by Covid. Gutted is not the word.
2022
March - International Women’s Day, Power of Women Festival, Margate. August - our first London show since December 2019 happens at The Miller, London Bridge despite fire, flood and financial ruin (of a different venue). Seemed like a good time to have a rest.
2023-24
Wilderness years: navel gazing and wool gathering.
Decided we were ready to rhyme again. And huzzah! Here we are. Come join us and get up on stage.
