Posted in Performances, tagged Miriam Nash, Poetry by Miriam Nash, poetry cafe, The Shuffle on May 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
In March I was invited to perform at the Shuffle, but when the organisers, audience and performers turned up, the poetry cafe was mysteriously closed. So instead I’m performing there tonight. Expect poems on the big bang, tree climbing, cupboards and coins…
7.30pm on Saturday 29 May at The Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, Covent Garden, WC2H 9BX. Tickets £5/£3.
Posted in Performances, Publications, tagged Catherine Pierce, Magma, Poems about Hunger, Poetry by Miriam Nash on March 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
One of my poems appears in the new edition of Magma. I’ll be reading at the magazine launch on Monday 8 March at The Troubadour in Old Brompton Road.
The theme for this issue is ‘Hunger’. Although it often means more work, I like submitting to magazines with a theme. Rather than trying to guess what an editor will like, based on previous issues, you can spend your time experimenting, trying to cook up an original approach to the topic – more thinking, playing and writing and less banging your head on the desk (potentially). I also think having a theme creates a more varied selection of poetry that hangs together as a whole. I’ve definitely found that in previous issues of Magma. As well as pieces written to theme, they accept poems on any topic, but a common thread runs through each magazine, making it interesting to read.
My poem, ‘Love Poem to Hunger’, is inspired by Catherine Pierce’s series of ‘love poems’ to objects, emotions and experiences in her chapbook, Animals of Habit. If you’d like to hear it, you can come to the launch, or alternatively, pick up a copy of Magma for yourself🙂
The Magma Launch starts at 8pm on Monday 8 March at The Troubadour, Old Brompton Road, SW5 9JA. Penelope Shuffle and Anne-Marie Fyfe will be featured, as well as other poets published in the magazine.
Posted in Performances, tagged HKB Finn, Jumoké Fashola, Miriam Nash, Poetry by Miriam Nash, Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, Tshaka, Voice on February 24, 2010 | 1 Comment »
After two months of writing, walking and (I won’t lie) luxuriating in Geneva, March will bring me back to London. On Sunday 14 March, I’ll be performing at Jazz Verse Jukebox, Jumoké Fashola‘s poetry and jazz night at none other than Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. Jumoké is an award winning broadcaster and singer, and a truly inspiring lady. HKB Finn, Tshaka and Voice will also be featured, as well as Jumoké’s own band. It promises to be a great night.
Jazz Verse Jukebox starts at 8pm on Sunday 14 March. If you’re a jazz performer or poet, you can enter the ‘jukebox’ for a chance to perform. Tickets are available on the door and it’s only £6.
Posted in Performances, Poems, tagged Baldessari, Miriam Nash, Pascale Petit, Poetry by Miriam Nash, Poetry from Art, Tate Modern on November 22, 2009 | 2 Comments »
This autumn I was hugely privileged to be given a sponsored place on Pascale Petit’s Poetry from Art course at Tate Modern, courtesy of the wonderful London literature organisation Spread the Word. Over the past six weeks I’ve been part of a dedicated group of writers exploring poetry in relation to installations and artworks in the Tate Modern galleries, from Baldessari’s strange, pulsating Braincloud to Tracey Emin’s retrospectives in the current Pop Life exhibition. I’ve been writing poems in response to art for some time now, playing around with ‘ekphrasis’. As someone who’s done quite a lot of personal writing, I find it a particularly good way to step outside of myself and venture into new and often unexpected territory. The course has been a great way to develop this practise – Pascale has challenged us to approach poetry in new ways, responding not only to the artwork, but to other art-inspired poems and to each others’ stories and thoughts, as a way to feed our writing.
Tomorrow night (Monday 23 November) I’ll be taking part in a reading to celebrate the end of the course, in the Baldessari exhibition at Tate Modern. Here’s one of the poems I’ll be sharing, as a sneak preview…
Head Space
After Baldessari’s ‘Braincloud’
My grandmother hid her brain
in a cupboard, behind stacked plates.
She brought it kitchen scraps
fed it stories, gossip, TV facts
her daughters’ phonecalls, forecasts
foreign words, whole chapters
out of novels, recipes for love wounds
or smoked mackerel, once
an erotic letter, pulsing under breath.
Her brain inhaled these gifts
as moisture swells to raincloud.
Eye pressed to hinge, I watched
as, camouflaged within white china
it grew to the size of a sky.
You can read more about the event, and book tickets HERE although word on the street says it’s sold out.
Posted in Performances, Poems, tagged Miriam Nash, Miroslaw Balka, Poetry by Miriam Nash, Raw Canvas, Tate Modern, We are all experts on June 21, 2009 | 4 Comments »
On Friday, I got to do something unusual. As part of WE ARE ALL EXPERTS, a new series of events run by Raw Canvas at Tate Modern, I was invited to talk for five minutes about piece of art of my choice to a room full of young art-enthusiasts and random passers-by.
My favourite way to engage with any kind of art at the moment is to sit down and write about it creatively, to see what happens. For this event, I chose a piece of sculpture by Miroslaw Balka, descriptively entitled 480X10X10. It’s a long string of soaps hanging from floor to ceiling. The soaps (all used) are threaded on to wire and are all different colours, sizes, textures and shapes. They look like stones or beads or even chewy sweets.
A close-up of a soap-chain by Miroslaw Balka
At the beginning of my performance I asked everyone in the audience to think of a word in response to the soap-string. Here are some of the words people came up with: collection, sea, beads, necklace, coral, holocaust, clean, upset, mundane, eat-me. Between each section of the poem I pointed at different people in the audience for them to say their word. So the audience composed a ‘list poem’ in response to the artwork, which became part of the poem I’d written.
I had some great reactions to this, including the best kind of audience comment: “I’m usually skeptical about poetry, but I really loved your piece…”.
Here’s the poem. It was difficult to hear all the audience’s words as the acoustics weren’t great, but I’ve inserted an approximation:
COLLECTING
I used to love collecting.
To see a family of things connected
A string of beads
A line of coloured stones
Bones curved in a spine.
I collected pebbles.
The beach was my museum
one by one I’d turn them
rinse them in the shallows
till they gleamed, moss green
slate grey, a grainy darkness
between red and black.
I’d press them in a snake
across the sand, run tiny fingers
wet, along their shapes
as smooth as soap, they smelt
of the places they’d washed.
They could have been anything.
AUDIENCE:
Sea
Mundane
Eat-me
Beads
Shore
Coral
Necklace
Cold
I want you to shrink this
to the size of your pocket
take it with you, hold it
lick it, wherever it’s touched.
Let smell connect to memory:
lavender, white musk
a whiff of Imperial Leather
your grandmother’s bathroom
soft hands on your skin
lather and bubbles and snow
building worlds out of foam.
I want you to look beyond
meaning. To make it your own.
AUDIENCE:
Clean
Sea
Holocaust
Bones
Wet
Upset
Beads
Sweets
Collection
I used to love collecting
to see a family of things connected
A string of beads
A line of coloured stones
Bones curved in a spine.
I wonder what things you collected.
Posted in Poems, tagged Erraid, Miriam Nash, Poetry by Miriam Nash on April 9, 2009 | 4 Comments »
One of the houses you can see down there was, believe it or not, the house where I lived aged 0-3. It’s on the Isle of Erraid, on the West coast of Scotland, opposite the holy island of Iona, which more people have heard of. It’s a big sadness of mine that I don’t get to go there more often, in fact, I haven’t been back for years now. The truth is, it’s one of the most difficult-to-get-to places in the world.
I often start performances with a poem I wrote about Erraid. Mainly because I know it well and it’s a poem that works well in performance because of the sounds. Hence why it looks a bit out of place on the page:
–
Morning Milking
–
Six am: the day
a pale sharp blue
down the track
my hand in my dad’s
everything waking
in frosted outlines
me in my wellies
and bobble hat
walking the morning.
–
Into the byre
sleepy and deep with dung
mixed with the mist
of breath in the moo
of the morning.
–
I stand on the gate
watch, as my dad
takes the teats
between fingers
and eases drips
from the udders
sending the shudders
up and down my spine
in time with the milking.
–
And the droplets of milk
and of mud and of love
cling in the air
of the clean blue morning
stinging the two red dots
of my cheeks
bright as my boots
and bobbling hat.
–
Silent, I watch
wanting to seal and stamp
this moment in an envelope
addressed to my older self
there, on the mat of a London flat
next to the semi-skimmed pasteurised
saying: you were once
this child of the morning.
You can become her again.
–
This poem was published in The Freedom of Paper and Ink (Salt), the anthology of the school-based poetry project Write Lines, let by poet Sundra Lawrence. I worked on Write Lines in 2007 as Project Coordinator, which is where I learnt a lot of what I’m doing now on the London Teenage Poetry SLAM.
