On The Road

The five of us squeezed into Sabrina's car today and headed north to Leigh (Nikki's performing her Phat Grrrl Revolution there on March 13th). We took the scenic route and did a postering run on the way.


Here's us in a great little park at the back of the Albany shops.

































This is us....in Orewa....but not us at all.

Had an awesome time in Warkworth by the river, and Matakana is a cool little town - hadn't been there before, strange how things can be right there all the time but it takes someone from somewhere else to come along before you get there. Matakana has invisible killer eels. And a very beautiful movie theatre - or so Christian tells me, I didn't actually get to go in.


It was so easy putting posters up in these towns. In Auckland you get turned down by the vast majority of business owners - who want their windows for only head-office approved promotional displays. Every single place we asked to put a poster up, put a poster up. One lady put up two.


And driving along the coast and through our rolling hills reminds me yet again why I dig living in New Zealand.


We wound up in Leigh, where we went and checked out the venue for Nikki's gig on the 13th - the Sawmill....


...and had a play on the swings....
















...and stood in front of the brick corrugated iron boat....

















All round a great day, heaps done, something written together even, well sort of written, something found together, arranged together. We have decided to make a programme for GROWL and have stitched together lines from every piece in the show. Anyway, the others just left a little while ago and it is time for me to sit still like a vegetable and absorb good bad TV by osmosis.

:o)

Miriam

Workshop Day

We got all of us together today - that's me, Sabrina, Murray, Christian and Nikki, all five of us, finally. And it clicked. Like, it really clicked. 3:30 saw us take over Bannerman Manor (aka Murray's flat) with Fiona Holding and her cello-goodness. I got home at 10:30. We took a break for dinner, but that was basically 7 hours of workshopping, getting to know each other, each other's words and each other's rhythms. And we're loving it.

While Murray and Christian worked with Fiona on their pieces with cello-backing, the three of us woman members of this collaboration got down to work on a 3-person adaptation of Bullet Hole Riddle. Which was amazing - Nikki's doing the sung sections of the piece in this version, and I love it. Having three female voices performing this piece really adds another dimension to its meaning. And it's all just fitting together. Each time we sat down with another piece to look at, we'd do a couple of run throughs and then we'd all be doing a little 'poetry dance' at how well it was coming together. Things just flow with us, this is working. The pieces with cello are coming along beautifully and I really can't say enough how f*cking brilliant it is to have a brand new person to work with, to bounce off. We don't get that enough here. There's so few of us around. You go to a gig and you almost always already know every performer. And they're great and everything, but it's what I'm used to. This is a new person, with a new voice, new perspective - for us and for Nikki too I suppose. The whole process has become electrified with it.

It's good to hear that Nikki is digging it here. The other poets she's met so far have all been just as welcoming as us, just as interested in it all (thank you other poets!). Lovely, wonderful Penny has given her a homey place to stay, and is just so cool.

We sent her off down to Genevieve McLean's Projector Project with Christian last night, gave her a chance to see some of the crazier or more avante garde side of what's going on down here. Christian was dressed as the "absinthe faery", which was kind of like a leprechaun who hands out absinthe I think. She seems to have survived with mind still intact, which is a good sign. Definitely isn't getting bored. Murray and I took her by the supermarket for obligatory Cheezles, Pineapple Lumps, L&P and Peanut Slabs before dropping her home tonight. I mean really these are things everyone should have tried.

We introduced her to the wonders of Vegemtie last night, which shereckons is like Cheese Whizz (??) and garlic mixed together - but still likes it! Interesting. I think cheese whizz might be like melted down Cheezles in a can, but frothy like Diary whip. With garlic. Vegemite is black. Whatever, poets' brains don't have to follow ordinary logic.

Sabrina says she is going to marry Nikki when she grows up. I am all in favour of this, because then we could keep her.

My voice is sore but I still feel like playing around with my solo pieces. Which would just be obsessive. So I won't. But that's how inspired I am about the whole thing.

6 more days to go. You can catch Nikki and Christian on Kiwi Fm at midday tomorrow.

Apart from the recent tragedy in my family, I am loving my life right now. As stressful, high-pressured and charged as it is. I get to spend the next week just 100% immersed in poetry and performance. Bliss. The Literatti are so great to spend time with. I mean sure, we are working. But we are loving it. Jokes, laughter, song, jigs, jazz-hands, poetry, emotion, inspiration, synchronicity, bloopers, and out-takes... these are days filled with beautiful madness. It's almost sad that the final product will only ever live for one hour. Which is why we're making every second of it count.

Hollow Trees

Today was our first day of promoting GROWL and rehearsing. Nikki and I headed off down to National Radio where she was interviewed for Lynn Freeman's Arts on Sundays show early this afternoon. Nikki went into a special interview room where she was interviewed by Lynn, who was in Wellington at the time. And I hung out in reception. As you do. Turns out the receptionist there, sophie, is a cellist so we have swapped details and we are so getting her on board for our next project, whatever that may be. Two cellists is better than one. And one is pretty damn fabulous.

So we wandered around for ages, realised that mainly tourists hang out on Queen St, grabbed some lunch on High street and headed up to Albert park, also full of tourists - though not so many. Uni hasn't really started back yet.

This is a tree.





















This is a hollow tree.

This is Nikki and I rehearsing inside the hollow tree.

Really this is Nikki and I being interupted by an interested Israeli tourist. Which was lucky really, otherwise we would not have this photo.

But seriously, ya gotta love Albert Park.

I think every one should rehearse poetry inside trees. It definitely beats Murray's lounge or Christian's backyard or my cave. Though fitting the entire Literatti inside a tree could be difficult. Personal space may be an issue.

Whatever though, 'Remember' - a never-before-performed Nikki Patin original - is now well on its way to being remembered. We made some nice changes to the delivery method and surprisingly the most tricky part of the poem - a string of words belted out in perfect unison - was one of the most fluid parts of the process.

Mainly though we just had a wicked time. There is something about playing with poetry that makes all my cells switch on. It's so cliched, but these words really do stop being words. What is so cool is that Nikki and I (and the rest of the literartists too really), we come from these vastly different backgrounds, countries, ethnicities, cultures, educations.... different everything...and yet we all seem to get each other, get each other's words, notice the same details. I am hearing small imaginary violins right now. And someone saying "awwww" and looking all cute. But we are all just humans trying to experience humanity as best we can. You can actually take a poet from one side of the world, throw them in with a bunch of poets from the other side of the world and make beautiful poetry. This is what we were hoping for.

And while it sounds like the performance poetry scene over in Chicago - the birthplace of Slam Poetry - is much bigger, it doesn't sound like they're doing anything that different from us here, we're just getting started here is all.

So we rehearsed in that tree for a good couple of hours, interspersed by visits from various tourists who wanted their pictures taken (or to teach us German), before wandering over to the Bfm studios at the University of Auckland. Conversation with the producer quickly dissolved/de-volved into places I don't really wanna go again, but there was laughter. Youtube has brought some great things to the world - like this Growl project - but far out it has brought some disgusting sh*t our way too, things we never needed to have known about or seen before. Gross.

So the interview with Adam on Drive was cool. Not sure who heard it, but it was good - chilled out, funny, deep at points - that's Nikki there. When asked what keeps her going (y'know, doing this whole poetry thing), she says something about how she knows she will never be this self in this moment ever again and all she wants to do with that moment is make poetry, even if that means surviving solely on Raman noodles or being hungry every now and then. Yep. And nice to be interviewed by someone who knows a lil something about performance poetry too.

Long day out. I'm hungry.

:o)

Miriam

The GROWL Action Begins

I woke up at 4:30 AM this morning. Christian came around and we both slowly started to get excited through the haze of early morning sawdust brains and confusion around how one actually gets to the airport these days.

Even though Nikki's plane got in early we were still there in time to spend a few minutes worrying that customs were being difficult when she appeared from the big fancy sliding doors like some kind of never-met-before old friend. If you'll let me get away with the oxymoron.

Greeted with an A3 poster of yourself and two jumping over-tired poets must have been a bit of jolt after 48 hours of travelling and over 11 000 kms, but we have finally met! This is significant.


We couldn't possibly have just gone home after so many months of emailing, so we drove up Mt Eden and watched the last of the sunrise before breakfast, which was an awesome idea.


I haven't seen a sunrise for ages. They really aren't sunsets in reverse, as it is said.

Anyway, a magical morning, followed by a great day chilling out and yarning about poetry, performances, our respective communities...ad infinitum....

.... until the tiredness kicked in and we all lost most of our power of intelligible speech. It happens.


Nikki is wonderful and we can all tell we'll work well together. Which is a much hoped for relief. Both of us confessed this afternoon that while our emails were nice, you never really can tell until you meet in person.

It makes this project even more insane - coming all this way to work on a poetry collaboration with people you've never met before and know next to nothing about, based on a Youtube comment. This is a woman after my own heart. Manifestation.

Tomorrow morning the gambit of rehearsals, workshopping and radio interviews begin. Wish us luck. Though really I think it's going to be wonderful. Can't wait. Which I suppose is why I am still up writing this right now after such a long day. But so inspiring. We are going to make some amazing poetry together, the 5 of us.

Don't forget - Sat March 7th, 7:30 at London Bar. There are only a very few acceptable reasons to miss this.

:o)

Miriam

It's Getting Real Now

Nikki Patin is arriving in 8 days.

Thus far we've managed to arrange six multiple-person performance pieces with Nikki, using nothing but google documents and email. In 8 days we'll get our first chance to start workshopping them together in person. This is very cool. And a bit risky. 1 week to rehearse together before the gig is not much time. Especially when you consider that months of work that have already been put in.

The other literartists and I spent almost 48 hours together a couple of weeks ago. By Sunday evening we had managed to create our (wicked) set for the gig, prepare over a thousand flyers, and workshop every one of the pieces that make up Growl. Turns out that Christian is a dab-hand at graffitti and that Murray makes a really good Nikki stand-in when needed. I'm currently memorising my lines in one of her poems - aptly titled 'Remember', as if it is a private imperative to me, remember, Miriam, remember the poem Remember. Half-way through now, and all is looking good.

We were also introduced to Mark McGill-Smith - an amazing flautist/clarinet-ist/pianist .... actually he seemed to be able to play nearly everything. He has composed and recorded an absolutely Orsum piece of music for our 5-person performance piece written by our newest Literartist Sabrina Muck - Right.

Last Sunday we had our final Literatti rehearsal before Nikki arrives. Fiona Holding rocked along with her cello and we had another chance to workshop performing with her. I'd just like to say that the cello is an amazing instrument, and that miss Fiona seriously knows how to do her thang with it. She's created music for seven pieces from the show, and it's gonna rock, in a cellist manner of speaking.

But seriously, I have never been this excited about a show before. It's also double-special for us because apart from three small appearances with the Inhibition Exhibition in March, Growl is going to be The Literatti's only show this year. So we're really making the most of it.

Growl is on March 7th at 7:30 pm (show starts at 8) at The London Bar. Tickets are on sale now at Real Groovy.

You can check out interviews with Nikki on Bfm's Drive on Feb 27th at 5:15 pm, Kiwi Fm on March 1st at midday, Fleet Fm's Dirty Words with Shane Hollands on March 3rd at 3 pm and on Bfm's breakfast show with Mikey Havoc on March 4th at 8:20 am.

Let the madness begin!