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