It's Been A Long Time, Baby.

But we're still here. And we've been working.

In fact, things are smoking.

After spending 2009 experimenting, we started workshopping the Ghosts Project in November last year. Today, we had our second-to-last writing workshop before we move into the next phase of the project - workshopping performance. Now is the time when we get to know our music with the familiarity of our own pulses.

Today was epic - the newest member of the project, Anna Kaye Forsyth, joined the workshopping process for the first time - and the five of us co-wrote a finale piece for the show. I think it is bloody brilliant, and have the task now of turning it into a script that speaks with the music - track 18 on NIN's Ghosts II. Yes, that's right, so much material flew out of the project that we just had to branch into the second Ghosts album - also released onto the creative commons. There are only three tracks that still need poetry.

So the body is almost complete.

Now we just need to make it dance.

The Cast Assembles

We recently announced that we are creating a performance poetry show set to and inspired by the album released by Nine Inch Nails onto the Creative Commons in 2008, Ghosts I. We called the madness the Ghosts Project and invited expressions of interest from people who wanted to write to the music as well as the Ghosts theme, with guest musicians being invited to further riff off the poetry and album.

We started off the month by meeting with all interested parties. Together we got clear on the concept, brainstormed ideas and chose NIN tracks to write to.

The Ghosts Project cast of contributing poets is: Miriam Barr, Christian Jensen, Daniel Larsen, David Ingram, Sabrina Muck and Shane Hollands. We are excited to be working with some people for the first time and to be reunited with both past and new Literartists once more. I think we proved with Growl that we don't do anything by halves in The Literatti. And our collaboration on the Ghosts Project with Shane Hollands, the founder of The Literatti and frontman for Freaky Meat, and David Ingram, a harmonica-playing, retired sailor with a long-time presence on the open mic circuit, promises to deliver nothing short of inspiring. Collaborating musicians are still to be announced - but the shortlist is very exciting.

The Ghosts Project reincarnates a series of characters who have influenced the shape of the era in which we live. After listening to the album together and choosing a track to start working with, we are now each researching characters ranging from Leonardo Da Vinci and Hans Christian Anderson through to Kate Sheppard and Tawhiao. These characters will be plunged into the modern age, placed in interactions with each other, introduced to their successors and given an opportunity to reflect on their own lingering effects. With a cast that spans three generations, the Ghosts Project is shaping up to be an unprecedented experience.

In other news, the Word of Mouth CDs have almost all sold out and as such, you can now download an MP3 version of the album on our website for free - they're not as good quality as the CD, but it at least makes them available. We hope to release downloadable MP3s of selected live Growl recordings shortly as well.

Our newest Literartist, Daniel Larsen, and I have been collaborating together with our old friend and DJ Steve Riley on a 30-minute show for a guest performance at Poetry Live on December 1st. This show is doubley exciting for me, because this is the first time Dan and I, who are also engaged, have worked together on such a substantial series of pieces. A few of you might have seen us perform 'eight ways of looking at it' with The Literatti at October Gig or Rhythm & Verse recently. Our Poetry Live show builds on that, but with the addition of new pieces, all set to music mixed and sampled live by Steve Riley.

On November 24th you can catch Christian Jensen and Murray Lee doing a shared Poetry Live guest spot. It's a good chance to catch Murray Lee in performance for those who have been missing him (my fingers are crossed for a big enough crowd to warrant him performing Train Gang). And I must say, Christian has been delivering some stellar work recently. The Global Eyes/Feet/Voice performances he did were fantastic.

Poetry Live is at Thirsty Dog on Karangahape Rd, it starts at 8 pm.

Dan, Christian, Sabrina and I were all part of the Global Eyes/Feet/Voice project and the poetry and art work we produced for it is all included in the Global Eyes book and multimedia CD. You can purchase copies for $30 by contacting Christian via ideasimbedcreative AT gmail DOT com

We'll keep posting updates about the Ghosts Project and what's happening with The Literatti Pool as things go down. Check in on the website regularly - we try to update it as often as possible. There are new photos of our last big shows up now.

You can catch Sabrina in performance on Sunday November 15th at the PEN Courage Day event alongside Stephanie Johnson, John Pule, Tim Heath and others. A great line up, and a great event.

The Literatti Take on the World of Object Art

Our very own Christian Jensen has been heading up a project with Ronald Andreassand in which 6 poets (including myself and fellow literartists Daniel Larsen and Sabrina Muck) were first charged with writing a poem for Matariki. Ronald Andreassend and Karen Chan then created a series of 7 ceramic light sculptures inspired by our poems. These were all exhibited with the poems at the Corban Estate during Matariki.

But that was just the beginning.

Next, the poets were asked to create object art that used the first collaboration as a spring-board - and the Global Eyes Feet Voice project was born. These objects, the original light sculptures and a photo series by Erin Gaffney, are part of the Global Eyes Feet Voice exhibition, which opened at Te Karanga Gallery on K Rd on Monday and runs until October 22nd. The exhibition includes a full colour book and multimedia CD including all of the poems and images of the objects as well as audio recordings of all of the poems.

Christian created a series of tokotoko talking sticks - handmade rimu walking sticks with poetry spiralling up its length. I created a series of twelve tea-light lamps, eight miniature handbound books and a series of three origami poetry flowers. Genevieve McLean created a series of prints. Daniel Larsen made the Global Eyes Feet Voice puzzle that greets you at the door. Ya Wen Ho created a series of drawings inspired by Renee Liang's poems. We all took the poems to the streets and photographs of the chalkings are also on display.

A comment from someone who was at the launch: "outstanding artwork ... inspired ... fabulous book ... great poems ... amazing ... stunning photography ... top!"

But that's still not all.

Myself, Daniel, Christian and Genevieve have also been collaborating with pianist Jonathan Besser and musicians Paul Williams, Craig Humphries and Otis Mace.

On October 24th we will all be performing together at the Thirsty Dog from 8 pm. It's just $5 on the door. Copies of the book are available from the exhibition and at the performance evening for $30.

If you can, do try to get along to the exhibition (it is very much new ground for all involved), and make damn sure you don't miss out on a copy of this beautiful book either!

Hopefully we'll see you on the 24th at the performance evening. It's going to be awesome. I love working with new live musicians. And my rehearsals with Jonathan have been fantastic.

View the Facebook event and RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=146313606189&ref=mf

Until then,

Miriam

P.S. You may have noticed our website is down at the moment - there has been a technical problem with our server, but it should be back online within the next couple of days.

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