Forced! No, but well, sort of. I’ve been writing poems all my days, love it. But it was just a hobby. I didn’t really think of it like that, more a diary I guess. Then a met a guy when I was 21 (now the father of my child) who really pushed me into going to an open mic night and recording my stuff. So really, that’s why. Then I kept getting asked to do gigs, which was more luck than anything I guess. (And hard work too!). But yeah, it was never the aim.

How do literature and creative festivals empower women? 

I think it’s so important festival. Last year I went to the Women Of the World meal in London which had lots of people who’d established the festival in other countries and one of the women couldn’t make it as she had been shot. For setting up the festival in her country. That’s what it means. For some, it’s life threatening to give women this sort of space.

I work with so many brilliant poets, lots of them female: Deanna Rodger, Vanessa Kisuule, Laurie Bolger, Sabrina Mahfouz, Bridget Minamore. They do so much and care so much and constantly inspire me to remember this stuff is important.

Do we still need feminism?

Yes.
Do you think that creative events like this can be useful, or is just masking over the structural and political issues?

I think creativity really is one of the best parts of humanity. I’ve no idea why the hell we’re on this planet but creativity seems to be a big part of it’s pleasure. It also often brings out the structural and political issues I think and makes them easy to engage with in so many different ways. I’ve definitely felt before like I’m not being practical enough by doing poetry – my last job was working in planning and youth work. But actually, it is. It doesn’t have to be, but it can be. Hearing midwives say they’ve snuck my poems into hospital wards is probably the current highlight!

Created and curated by the countercultural Scottish Neu! Reekie! and Caught By The River, a collective celebrating the non digital in life, this event promises to be provactive, passionate and powerful.

Taking place on Wednesday 26th April at Caught by the River’s spiritual clubhouse, The Social, 5 Little Portland Street, London W1. Doors open at 7pm; tickets are £8 in advance and can be bought here.

]]> https://andsoshethinks.co.uk/where-are-we-now-in-music-words/feed/ 0 https://andsoshethinks.co.uk/hollie-mcnish-tells-folkestone-what-she-wishes-shed-been-told/ https://andsoshethinks.co.uk/hollie-mcnish-tells-folkestone-what-she-wishes-shed-been-told/#comments Tue, 07 Mar 2017 15:45:43 +0000 https://andsoshethinks.wordpress.com/?p=7504 First published on WOWKent

Hollie McNish is a couple of minutes late to the Folkestone Quarterhouse stage. She keeps peering through the curtains throughout the hour long show. Like she’s not quite fully focused on the audience.

Which of course she’s not. Because she’s a mum. And since she unexpectedly became pregnant at the age of 26, her life has changed. Becoming a mother (her daughter, now 6, sits backstage watching Harry Potter) has been the best, hardest, most tumultuous, bizarre, emotional experience of her life, and is the subject of Nobody Told Me, a book of poetry and parenthood. It’s a collection of extracts from the diaries she kept from learning she was pregnant to her daughter’s third birthday, written in a mix of prose and poetry.

The reading is part of the Quarterhouse’s International Women’s Day Festival, and listening to McNish it’s clear that feminism and raising awareness of these issues is still needed. The book and show connect her own experience of motherhood with the political, society, race, relationships, commercialism and gender. Whilst occasionally admonishing herself for not being practical enough in delivering change, she knows that ‘creativity really is one of the best parts of humanity. It often brings out the structural and political issues I think and makes them easy to engage with in so many different ways. I’ve definitely felt before like I’m not being practical enough by doing poetry – my last job was working in planning and youth work. But actually, it is. It doesn’t have to be, but it can be. Hearing midwives say they’ve snuck my poems into hospital wards is probably the current highlight!’

You can see why they do. McNish is startlingly honest. Her writing and reading is conversational and real. Gritty and explicit. And this openness is needed in a world where pressures on new mothers are unrealistic and stressful and the practical aspects of such a dramatic life change aren’t discussed and the difficult elements side-stepped. She tells us about poo, sick and bleeding. About how alone she felt. The anxiety that comes from not knowing what you should be doing. How you’ll feel like a kid yourself, but have to get on with it. How she would find herself breastfeeding on toilets because after waiting ‘eight weeks to get the confidence to go into town / Now, the comments around me cut like a knife / As I rush into toilet cubicles / feeling nothing like nice.’

She admits feeling guilty because she doesn’t want sex again when her baby and boyfriend paw at her and ‘I just wish sometimes no one needed me / and I don’t want to feel guilty and tired all the time / I just want a body that’s mine.’ As celebrities pop back into shape in a few weeks her ‘stomach bulges like a water balloon / Her hollowed-out body lies like a carcass consumed.’ And she catalogues the scathing looks resulting from a toddler tantrum that comes out of nowhere, being judged on how fit she is to be a mother on that one moment and feeling like a ‘wretched human’ as a result.

But there’s also the beauty of what a child can teach you, and one of the first pieces she reads is about her year-old daughter looking in the full length mirror she has just reinstalled in the house, too disgusted by her own body to use it. Her daughter is in awe ‘hands clapping in applause to it / naked, bold and proud / her mouth open wide and round like / wow / my body is amazing.’

Spoken word has recently become fashionable, and rightly so. A new generation of poets including McNish, Kate Tempest and other contemporaries are on the national curriculum and McNish herself runs a company focusing on poetry in education. The entry of 11 April where she writes how she ‘wrapped my lips around my baby’s nose and sucked the snot from it’ is taught in schools (‘probably as contraception,’ she deadpans).

Perhaps young people connect with her. Dressed in laidback trainers, hoops, shirt over t-shirt, bright eyes and blonde hair in a ponytail McNish doesn’t look to be in her thirties. She’s friendly, warming the audience with her vulnerability, and invites us all to have a birthday drink with her in the bar. She has always written, ‘all my days, love it.’ But ‘Nobody Told Me’ was meant to be just another diary, like her teenage ones, a way of articulating herself and dealing with the emotion of pregnancy and motherhood, not a book. After an evening of entertainment and wisdom, I’m so glad that she was persuaded, that ‘Nobody Told Me’ is out there in the world and Hollie McNish’s bold voice is being heard by men, women, old and young.

Hollie McNish’s play Offside, which she co-wrote with Sabrina Mahfouz, comes to the Marlowe Studio, Canterbury  on 10 & 11 April 2017.

Folkestone’s creative hub will be marking the event with a whole host of events that demonstrate harmony, celebration, reflection, advocacy and action – through the creative angle. This year’s theme is ‘#BeBoldForChange’ and the Quarterhouse programme embraces this. February and March are packed with films, talks, workshops and events that inspire and demonstrate the power and potential of women.

On February 11^th Hollie McNish, poet, writer and performer spoke about and read from her latest book, Nobody Told Me, stories and poetry about motherhood. She is completely convinced that we still need feminism, and sees creativity as playing a bit part in this. ‘I think creativity really is one of the best parts of humanity…and often brings out the structural and political issues I think and makes them easy to engage with in so many different ways. Hearing midwives say they’ve snuck my poems into hospital wards is probably the current highlight!’

Motherhood clearly changes things for women, and through their sessions the Motherhood & Identity Project are seeking personal testimonies and autobiographical exploration of what this might look and feel like through physical, social, or political aspects through workshops and an exhibition at The Brewery. It seems that even in an age where choice is apparently celebrated, that choice only counts when it is career orientated.

As Catherine from the project says ‘There is a certain boldness in claiming public space for women with babies on their hips and noisy messy small children to be welcomed in and to have their ideas heard. So much potential is lost when we treat women in this stage of life as only caregivers, or only value their contributions when they leave their family elsewhere.’

Ethnicity and nationality are also in the spotlight. In The Diary of a Hounslow Girl on Mar 29^th, by Ambreen Razia with Black Theatre Live shows the experiences and challenges of growing up amongst the city temptations as a 16 year old Muslim girl. Comedian Bridget Christie’s acclaimed show Because You Asked For It (Mar 31^st) challenges us to think about what leaving the EU means – all through humour and a bold female voice.

It’s not just gender that plays a role – age, ethnicity and social class all impact and diversify the lives of women. Boss(y) Girls is for and by young women aged 13 to 25 who are passionate about empowerment and speaking out. Their workshops offer the opportunity to talk, design, create, meet like-minded people and have fun. Inspired by Beyoncé’s words, ‘I’m not Bossy, I’m the Boss’ boldness infiltrates every part of the project. As founder Emma says ‘this project is all about teaching young women to be bold, and that you don’t just have to accept things the way they are – you can change them.’ ‘Guerilla girl action’ is on the agenda, where the team will be sharing the outputs from their collaborative sessions.

At the other end of the age spectrum, but not necessarily issues, Older Women Rock! is an innovative project run and devised by Leah Thorne, whose work explores identity and liberation. They’ll be combining visual arts, poetry and vintage clothing to raise awareness and explore issues that face women in their mid-50s to early 70s. As well as a pop-up shop and exhibition at the Space Gallery, a panel discussion on Mar 11^th, a debate with the founders of the iconic magazine Spare Rib, the Women Over 50 Film Festival (Mar 1^st), screenings of Carrie Greenham’s Home (Feb 22^nd) and Stories from the She-Punks (Mar 8^th) they host the brilliant Profanity Embroidery Group on Mar 5^th for an embroidery session to stich not frills and flowers, but controversial but necessary phrases on and in their clothes.

Subverting stereotypes through a ‘feminine’ activity sounds like a brilliant twist, and Professor Julia Twigg, Professor of Social Policy and Sociology at the University of Kent and a huge advocate of the work says that such activities are ‘vital’ to women. ‘I certainly want to endorse the responses of women to dress that are bold, whether through the wildness of their dress, or through their refusal to be bothered by it. I think we need each other to be bold.’

Entrenched attitudes are not easy to shift.  But creativity can help us think about and challenge these patterns, and give everyone the confidence to do so as part of such a collective event. From boldness great change can come. It certainly will be coming out of Folkestone this spring.