Introducing…Hollie McNish
“The world needs this book” The Scotsman
With Benjamin Zephaniah stating ‘I can’t take my ears off her’, Kate Tempest describing her poetry as ‘welcoming, galvanising and beautiful’ and fans ranging from Robin Ince, Pink, Tim Minchen, Marian Keyes to most of the UK’s midwives, Hollie McNish is a poet whose readings are not to be missed. She is an Arts Foundation Fellow in Spoken Word, has garnered over two million Youtube views for her online poetry performances and was the first poet to record at London’s famed Abbey Road Studios.
Here, she will be joining us to perform poems, read from and chat honestly and openly about her latest book, Nobody Told Me. The book is a unique blend of poetry and storytelling, taken straight from Hollie’s personal diaries. As she states herself ‘it is not a polished collection’; rather, it is a very candid, at times gutting, at others hilarious, look at her experiences from pregnancy to the pre-school drop off. Expect strong language as she talks colours, cravings, politics, transformers, sex, tree-climbing, feeding, train journeys, lots and lots of love and occasionally locking herself in toilets to cry a little.
Interview
What makes your heart sing?
Kids laughing. Well, anyone laughing really.
What makes your heart sink?
Kids crying (when it’s genuine. Tantrum crying I’m pretty immune to now!)
This year’s festival theme is Love, so what does love mean to you?
I feel like Love has been bastardised by pop music and the teenage romance churned out on most radio channels. But for me, it goes hand in hand with happiness. I think we look at love as something for those closest to us. Which I think is damaging really. So I’m trying to stop thinking like that, but it’s hard! Like, the mentality that makes most wealthier societies buy their own kids about 50 Christmas gifts while ignore those children who have none. I think a lot of love, the way we see it nowadays is pretty privatised and fairly selfish! Cynical, sorry!
Is love simply constructed by society to make us feel like there is some point to all this? Or is it a bedrock of the human soul?
I think a lot of ideas of it is a social construct. Like marriage. I’m all for crying at weddings, but I don’t think it’s a natural demonstration of love. I think for me really, it’s that first laugh of a child or a baby. The fact humans laugh and smile before we even learn to talk. That’s where love starts for me. Even if that laughter comes from a fart or playing with a stone!!!