Last Reflections

Last night we performed Echoing the Ghosts at Galatos, the Moving Image Centre group presented the outcome of their 3 weeks spent workshopping with us and I officially ended my time as creative director for The Literatti.

When I explained my crazy set idea about lamps and giant picture-frames to Christian I was sure he would tell me it couldn't be done. But he spent about 10 seconds thinking, eyes to ceiling, and then said that First Scene had big frames we could probably adapt and he knew where we could get some light bulbs. Awesome to have him co-directing and there to facilitate wonderful things with the First Scene props department. I was stoked with the way the stage looked last night. It was fantastic to perform in it. Echoing the Ghosts was the perfect way to crown the end of my time as director.

It has been an amazing 3 and a half years full of things I never expected I would do. We've toured twice to Whangarei, once to Parihaka, once to Dunedin and once two of us even toured to Ubud in Bali. Camp Literatti back in 2008 as we prepared for Word of Mouth was a major highlight and something I hope we get to do again. Getting to work with Nikki Patin last year on Growl, working with Craig Humphries, Just the Tikit and Karen Hunter and collaborating with digital artist Kate Barton for One Foot Forward the year before - more things I'll never forget. We've made some freaking awesome pieces of performance art in this time.

From the very first duets that we performed at The Kerouac Effect in 2007 - Getting Game Jaded with me and Murray Lee, and a Kerouac piece by Andra and I - the collaborative performances have just consistently got my wheels whirring. Later on we'd adapt Alternative Angels and send it through a series of reincarnations that would see it eventually performed with an animation projected on a giant screen as a theatre-piece. Shane and Andra started melding poetry and song. Murray Haddow got Murray Lee performing poetry in French with him for the Dunedin Fringe Festival. Shane performed No Fixed Abode with Craig Humphries on the broom-bass. Murray Lee got audiences creating his backing tracks for him in Train Gang. Christian and I started getting complex on the layering with The Thing Is in One Foot Forward. We made poetry across the globe with Nikki Patin.

Oh there are so many things that we have done and it's been hard work, but an honour to have had a hand in making those things come about, in creating the space for the other literartists to create what they have - and they have created so many cool, cutting edge, inspired, funny, sad, bitter-sweet, beautiful pieces of poetry and performance.

I've learned a lot. I really didn't know anything about events or directing the creative process when I started. I remember being stunned at Shane's suggestion I take on the role. Hopefully the people I've shared the journey with have grown from it along the way too. It's hard to know what it means to other people really. It is so intangible a thing, to have been a director of these performances that live for such a short amount of time and are only ever witnessed by a select few people, when really all you did was facilitate something anyway. But I am proud of it nonetheless.

Finding a new Creative Director was a task in itself. At the end of 2007, I had my eye on Charis Boos for the role, but she got whisked away to Wellington and no one else was prepared to do it at that time. They were probably right to be wary - it is a taxing job! At the end of 2008, Murray Lee started to prepare for the role in 2009. But then he got domestic responsibilities and decided to pull out. I have no idea how I managed to keep the group going at all while I did my Master's study in 2008 and then wrote my thesis last year, but somehow it happened, we produced Growl. And we've pulled through stronger than ever.

I'm glad for this time, for these people I have had the opportunity to work and play and create and cry and laugh with.

Thank you.

Today I did some gardening. Next weekend I am going to finally type up and begin editing my latest poetry. And then I am going to play around with some new performance stuff. Just for fun. Because I will have time.

I hear Christian has hooked us up to evolve Echoing the Ghosts in collaboration with the Wallace Art Trust, so I can't wait to see what he gets out of me for that. I am really looking forward to the opportunity to be directed and led into new areas of myself in that way. I can't wait.

And to part, here's an interview with Christian, Sabrina and I in Renegade House.

http://renegadehouse.co.nz/?p=272

I'll see you all next time - as a plain old performance poet and I'll be loving it!

Over and out,

x

Miriam

Things are heating up

With only 3 weeks until Echoing the Ghosts opens at the Corban's Estate chapel building (September 18th), one might say that things have been moving rapidly since our return from Whangarei. We're also performing the same show on September 25th at Galatos.

Last weekend we watched the footage of the Ghosts previews we performed and took things up a notch. Now we are preparing for our first rehearsal in our performance space at Galatos. The set is about to be constructed. I don't want to ruin anything, but this involves suspending things from ceilings and collecting vast amounts of lamps.

Each show is going to be slightly different, the content the same, but with such vastly different venues, the set and lighting must adapt.

The chapel show is going to be more intimate, with the smaller venue. The building itself, being historical in vibe, will become part of the scene; though the show itself has almost no religious content, I can't help but wonder how the building itself could change the lens people view the poetry through. This will be interesting to observe. While we have full sound capabilities at the chapel show, the lighting side of things has required some inventiveness, with what we think will be beautiful results. It's just not the kind of thing you could achieve in a big venue, with a stage like Galatos.

But at Galatos we get to present the result of a three-week series of workshops with moving image artists from the moving image centre as a prelude to the main event. At Galatos, you'll be further away from the poets, but there's capacity for full lighting and more room to move around in.

We've all been rehearsing with our music hard out, and will start rehearsing with our sound tech on the 4th. After so long with these poems, you better believe it feels good when you finally start to get your music cues bang on every time!

Sabrina and Christian just left after an hour or so of extra rehearsing - our multiple person pieces have become so much more complex, and cooler. We've been doing this since 2007 now, and it's great to be at a point where we can now start experimenting a bit more. Daniel and Christian have THE most awesome duet where the product of Jung's mind is pitted against that of Voltaire's. I love it. NIN's music is freaking awesome, travels us everywhere, it is amazing that they made this kind of project possible. I wonder if they ever got our emails saying we were doing it. We did run it by some official representative in Auckland, so it got a 'go ahead.' But I wonder if Trent Resnor himself knows. It would be cool if he did.

Last night Christian, Dan, Shane, Murray Haddow, Anna Kaye and I, trooped into Poetry Live to check out the guest appearance of Gus Simonovic and his new group Printable Reality. The name is highly misleading, because they're actually a brand spanking new performance poetry group. We are pretty stoked because on their website they proudly state that they combine theatre, poetry, music. We think it is about time that another group of people come out and try their hands at it. I'm especially pleased to see that they haven't just taken to reciting poetry over music and thinking that they've made it - but that they've also tried their hands at the theatre component of what we've been doing too. Totally jealous that Siri is Gus's girlfriend and not mine though - a beautiful dancer - oh we've been planning on working dance in since forever, Haddow and Shane did it out at Lopdell a while back, and there was that awesome collaboration that ummm, damn I forget the artists, they presented photos of it at Winter Warmers at the art gallery in 2009, was great. Anyway, awesome to see that in action. Pissed we didn't get to it first!

Anyway, it's time that someone else has come along and stoked the revolution in word again, it was needing it. With us off workshopping for a year, there hasn't been a whole lot happening in spoken word in Auckland aside from Freaky Meat, which has continued to churn out the jewels. It's be great for us to have another group of peeps making stuff along the lines of what we do, great things can only come of it, there will be some local people to respond to, instead of having to turn only to other countries for connection with other people doing what we do, (not that we're about to stop doing that).

They've got a real collection going on, including resident visual artists, and of course Siri Embla, the dancer - who brings other dancers too. So I expect they are going to produce some cool stuff.

Last night I caught their guitarist, and then Gus performing with the guitarist, while Siri danced. One dance was a bizzare thing involving a chair that I won't go into. It was emotive to say the least. They projected images onto a white-clothed dancing body and I thought it was amazing. We think they're going to do some really good things together. If you get a chance, check them out sometime.

Here's to performance poetry though, may it live long and prosper!

Surviving Prison

A couple of months ago I received an email from Jennie at Auckland Central Remand Prison in Mt Eden. She was interested in the possibilities that lay behind harnessing spoken word and performance as a way of improving literacy in the prison. And so The Literatti found ourselves preparing to run a series of workshops that would see 12 inmates writing and performing their own work in front of the rest of their unit.

We enlisted the help of Michael Rudd for this project, as he'd expressed interest in doing this kind of thing before and has the right mixture of experience and skills, having worked with youth a lot already. We've been trying to work together for ages, but the fates always conspired against us. This time though, everything lined up perfectly, and Michael was in.

So, Dan, Christian, Shane & I, joined by Michael set about the task of workshopping with a dozen young dudes, all under 19, all in remand, for who-knows-what or how long.

We rocked along for an acclimatisation tour a few weeks back. The new prison has no bars, except for in the elevators, which totally take you back to Silence of the Lambs. People are constantly watching from the Master Control Room. You pause at each heavy, blue door and await the click. Pass through the second metal detector. The room we are to use for the workshops looks exactly like any other classroom. Only there's nothing sharp anywhere.

On Wednesday, Christian, Michael and I turned up at 8:30 am to set up for the first workshop. We talked about what poetry was, found out that quite a few of these guys already wrote songs and raps, and took them through a bunch of exercises to generate some material. By the end of the day, most of them were pretty into the idea and had produced the beginnings of their pieces, and in some cases had already written their entire poem. We gave the officers some pencils and paper to pass on to the guys so they could work on their poems overnight, and wished them all luck.

It was a full on session, but really, not that much different from how I remember some of my high-school classes in Kaitaia to be like. On the whole they were stoked to be out of their typical drudgery, and many seemed to have things on their minds that they wished to communicate - they were missing their families, missing the birth of their children, watching people leaving them. And others were struggling to put up a front. That day, people read some really moving poetry. And on the whole it went down well. But occasionally they'd all laugh at something they deemed 'soft' I suppose, and you could see the person who'd shared clamping up. But there was freedom there too, in the invitation to express themselves.

It's an inspiring experience. There's the shy white kid who keeps to himself. The others make fun of him some times. He is sensitive, like an open wound. There's the tough white dude, he's into Serge Tankian, he sings in a band and he writes a poem about having his heart broken by a girl. This draws laughter. There's the loud-mouthed Maori boy, clown-of-the-class, but he's a good guy underneath it in a lot of ways, he keeps things moving. He writes his poem straight away, it was just waiting to come out. He's keen, bright eyed like a magpie. Oh and the twins, the twins from the North, (more than half of them from up that way though), missing their family and drawing their tomoko, beautiful spirals while they are thinking. And then Maori Elvis, the most beautiful young man, with a shyness, reigning himself back always. He won't write, but draws pattern after pattern and aims it at the bin in the corner. But he looks like he wants to, you know?

On the second day we arrive to find out that they were not given their pencils and paper to take their cells. That means that only the prisoners who were already allowed writing implements were able to work on their poems last night. We are two people less today, because they had court cases. So we are down to 10. Some people have composed things in their heads, others have written entire pieces. Some people have written new pieces. I can't help but notice that these are much tougher than the pieces I heard yesterday, and this is sad in a way, but I understand. We are asking them to bare this stuff to their entire unit tomorrow. And there are other dynamics to consider.

We split the room up, Michael and I work with the people who still need to write the words for their final piece, what's come to be called their 'represent' piece. Shane works with those people who have already written their poems and goes through some performance techniques. By the end of the day everyone except for two people have poems written - one has his composed in his head, he says, and the other says 'he can't write poetry'. We do a round where everyone shares, practicing their delivery - and they have depth to them. These are not just write-offs, though they know that's what people think of them. They all care for someone. Today we spend time with individuals. We find out bits of their stories, what they care for, what they are sad about, what makes them angry.

On day three we all go - Christian, Shane, Michael, Daniel, & I. We spend an hour with the class, now down to 9, refining poems (they were allowed pencils last night though, so that was good), and doing a practice round. The class nominates our class clown as MC and he thrives under the role, whipping everyone into shape and running the whole show.

And then we go into the gym, which is just a big empty concrete room with a basketball hoop at one end. The other half of their unit attends as the audience, and the head of prison programmes rocks along to see what we came out with. The guys all jump up and perform or read their poems - and it's good. One guy is really shy, so I perform with him, we do a line each. And the twins incorporate guitar, and then one of them improvs with Michael Rudd as he makes up a poem that takes everyone on a journey down past Taupo. The guy who only moments ago was refusing to read to his class, jumps up and rocks out a mean performance, moving around, gesturing, varying his voice. Once all the guys have performed, The Literatti jump up and do our thang. We finished off with me and Shane reading out a poem we wrote during the writing workshop, using only things that the inmates said.

And then we all ate cake together and drank fizzy drink - their reward for doing the class and performance. And now we just get to hang out with everyone. I wander the hall, shaking everyone's hand and thanking them for their effort. Everyone in the class had their own talent that shone through during the last three days, and I want to make sure that every one of them knows that I saw it. Some of them sign and give me their poetry to keep. I talk to the shy guy I read a poem with. He is saving his lemonade. He says he hasn't drunk fizzy drink for 8 months; you can hear him savouring his first sip, which hasn't come yet, in his mind. As they all line up to go back to their cells I want to say something else, but I do not. The guards make shy-guy throw his unopened lemonade in the bin. Christian and I are distraught - he didn't even get to taste it, oh and he wanted it so bad. Our MC for the day calls out over the cacophony, 'Thank you for everything, poets!" and with that, and a bit of shuffling, they're gone.

It was only a couple of hours a day for three days, but I will remember these dudes for a long time to come. I think we all will. They remind me that there is good in us all, even the people who we have wrapped up in violent stereotypes. And I wish I could know what will come of them.

They tell the Programmes Manager that they want to do it every day though. This is good feedback. And we'll now be making this a regular thing - every quarter, we'll rock along and open another group of 12 up to poetry as way to have a voice and express it.

All in all, a hugely inspiring, enriching experience for us all. There's bound to be poetry that comes from it.

On another note - we've just tentatively booked our venues and dates for the outcome of the Ghosts Project - a show called Echoing The Ghosts - and I am sitting here looking at the product of our photo-shoot last week - looking good!

More updates to come, so so much has been happening.

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.

Ghosts begins - expressions of interest sought

We have a new project. It is killer. It is open for other people to get their fingers in the pie as well.

Nine Inch Nails released their instrumental album Ghosts onto the creative commons last year, complete with a series of images. The Literatti are writing a show to this album and series of images and invite members of the recently developed Literatti Pool and others to be involved. The show will be about the influence of our ancestors and idols, a homage to the ghosts of the modern age so to speak. Contributing performers will write to both the piece of music selected and this theme. In this way we hope to create a performance poetry show that also tells a story.

There are limited places to be filled, so interested parties will need to get in quick. We invite contributing performers to make expressions of interest. We will select contributing performers based on three things:

(1) they write excellent poetry, suitable for performance

(2) they can perform. well.

(3) they are willing to rehearse regularly and collaborate.

We will also need to ensure that you are available for the workshop and rehearsal schedule, once it has been set. But please allow for a first workshop in late October/early November (a Sunday afternoon) and one in late January, and then fortnightly thereafter.

Expressions of interest should include a brief bio and a sample of some of your best poetry. Because of the nature of the event, we cannot promise a set fee to each contributor, instead contributing performers will paid a proportional split of the proceeds made from ticket sales. Due to the regulations of creative commons licensing agreements, this is a not-for-profit event. All proceeds will be distributed between contributors.

The show will be jointly directed by Miriam Barr and Christian Jensen as part of the official hand-over of the role of creative director. Christian will be in his homeland of Norway from November 2009 - March 2010, and much of the writing of the show will take place then, with technology again making Literatti collaboration across great distances possible. Miriam will workshop with the other contributing performers during this time, and there will be a month of intense in person rehearsals when Christian returns. The aim is to open the show in late April or May.

If you are interested in being involved as a contributing performer please email an expression of interest to theliteratti@gmail.com. If you have footage of yourself performing or audio which could help us to get a feel for what you do, please include links. Please be aware that we may ask to meet up with you and check out what you do in person before we make a final decision.

Rhythm and Verse and stuff

So, as you all know we've been workshopping with these other poets. Last Sunday we started developing our first collaborative pieces together, which is really exciting. And even more exciting is that these poets will be starting to appear in shows with us from here on out, as each person gets pieces ready for performance.



Kiri & Christian worked out a sizzling performance of a love poem by Kiri.






Shane & Anna collaborated on two poems, one by each of them, and Daniel & I started collaborating on one of his poems.



Sabrina, Christian and I are looking forward to doing some gigs with these guys soon.


And last night, the first from the Literartist Pool joined Christian and I in performance with Craig Humphries at Rhythm & Verse up on the top floor of Lopdell House in Titirangi. Daniel Larsen was The Literatti sound technician until the end of last year and has been pretty much everywhere The Literatti's been in the last three years. We realised he was on the wrong side of the curtain when he was involved in the People In Your Neighbourhood Project last year, and so invited him along to the workshops.



He was awesome!

Dan and I performed our first collaborative poem together in The Literatti.




Last night, Craig Humphries improvised music and we performed a mixture of old and newer pieces. Christian and Daniel were rock-stars, and I reckon I was alright too. Small but very appreciative audience. Craig was on fire with his broom bass and violin umbrella, and he turned Christian's Ja Ja into a bloody awesome hip-hop piece with his home-made drum. Loved it.

And I'm thinking over what kind of craziness I can do for a 'last show' before Christian takes over the reigns.

Suspense

I sent out invitations to a bunch of people to take part in the first of our monthly workshops today. We start at the end of May, and Toi Ora, a wonderful community arts trust has kindly given us some space to hold them in. Which will be a relief for the partners-of-the-literartists and their flatmates, I'm sure. :o)

I can't wait to see what happens. We will surely learn more ourselves as we try to share our own skills, while fresh eyes, ears and perspectives will surely offer new and useful feedback. We share our skills and we also learn from the people around us. This is true community. So we've contacted a bunch of locals who we think are heading in our direction, and we'll just have to see what happens, creative connections seem inevitable. bliss.

This was always part of what we wanted to do, part of Shane's original vision. To involve a wider set of people, who were all supporting each other, even if they weren't all involved in shows. To build an active performance poetry scene in Auckland. Workshopping with other people is part of that.

It's also on the agenda to offer workshops to the public, to anyone who wants to get a few skills - more one-off kinds of things. If anyone is keen for one of them and can get a group together, we'd be more than happy to oblige. OR you can take part in the workshop on July 18th, which is open to the public as part of Poetry Live's Montana Poetry Day event, Resurrection Night. This involves preparing a performance of a poem by your favourite dead poet. Aside from preparing for the Poetry Live event this workshop is useful for developing skills without the pressure of worrying about the poem itself. Contact details are on our homepage, which has recently been beautified. www.theliteratti.co.nz

But for now, the focus is on getting right into what we all got involved in this for in the first place - to play around with poetry and performance, to see what you can do, how far you can take it, where you can take it and how many people you can do it with. These are exciting times. I feel like a small child, in a white dress, faced with a big mud puddle. Can't wait to jump in and mix it up.

In the meantime ....

It has been an interesting couple of days.


We took Nikki to the airport on Friday and watched her fly off to Wellington. I hear last night's Phat Grrrl Revolution went swimmingly at Happy down there. Stoked. She's heading to Dunedin on Monday - so watch out for her down there people and say hi from Miriam if you run into that crazy-intense woman from the States who I am so pleased to have had the chance to work with.


That night Murray, Christian and myself performed a set at Galatos as part of the Inhibition Exhibition. Warming up for rock bands this time - which I think may actually be more intimidating than performing in between them. But we did it and we did it good. Was a wicked venue to play, great little stage. Hope to do something else there down the track.



Murray, Me and Christian chill out pre-show.















Murray and Christian














Me doing Supported Accomodation. That shut them up.

***

Almost simultaneously, as Nikki would have been rocking her performance out down in Welly last night, Christian and I were performing with Texture and a bunch of other Auckland Fringe performers as part of Bang Bang Caravel at Cross Street Studios. They had erected a childhood-fort-like tent constructed out of sheets and pieces of fabric, which filled the entire gallery from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and the whole evening's performances took place in there - the audience gathered around on the floor like people around a camp fire, a small stage and curtain set up at one end, lights and a disco ball.



Texture performing at Bang Bang Caravel.

***

This blog is about something else though. I have just returned from the first ever live Dirty Words Sessions at Thirsty Dog and WOW. It was vastly underattended, because clearly some people take a while to get hooked onto a good thing. And oh my this is a good thing. Shane Hollands, beloved founder of The Literatti, started this one up, an off-shoot of his Fleet Fm show 'Dirty Words with Shane Hollands'. What you have is a two-piece 'house' jazz band, and a couple of booked poets. The band improvises music and the poets run with it in whatever way they see fit.



The coin toss decides who's gonna go first while the musicians warm up.















Christian gets going.









Christian Jensen and Texture were the guest poets. Shane performed. There were also opportunities for open mic, and a bunch of other poets who were there, myself and Mr. Murray Lee included, jumped up and performed with the band as well. Anna Kaye cranked out a really different piece for her, and I loved it - I'm calling it after it's repeated refrain "I'm sick of this shit". A piece from the Kerouac Effect I do believe. And Daniel Larsen performed stunningly, he's really owning his stuff now, I love it. I keep saying that. But good things are happening in our world of words and performance these days.

Texture turns prose into jazz beat poetry on the fly.


















Daniel synchs up with the musicians.








Performing unrehearsed with a live band is exhilerating - both to watch and to do. Something about boundaries is erased and avenues of what to do with the words open up before you. You just have to grab them as they come. No second guessing. It's a series of Yoda moments really. There is no think, only do or do not.

Keep an eye out for Dirty Words Sessions number 2 which is on April 12th I think - it will be a sunday. Make sure not to miss it. An amazing experience to be part of. One day this event is going to be a big part of our poetry scene up here, I'm so excited to have been at the first one. Hopefully I'll get to join Christian as one of the booked poets there oneday soon.

Nikki Patin's impressions - Just remember ...

the difference between outside and inside is a matter of perspective.

windows are not screened, doors are thrown wide and wanton like legs tired of constantly being crossed.

the wind sings through clothes, bringing katy dids and cicadas buzzing against walls while millions of spiders make their plans, watching warily from corners of impossibly high ceilings.

auckland is a sly grin of a city. the folks here are cool, like real cool, like real real cool, like cooler than any other group of people i've ever met. people smile and ask questions. they look folks in the eye and they call everything sweet. but when they hit the road, aucklanders press pedals to floors and zoom around mountain curves with a confidence that feels dangerous. then you notice how none of the cars are dented and how you never see an accident.

my time here has been sacred. maybe it's because i'm new to this place, maybe it's because i'm on a sort-of vacation, maybe it's because i am an anamoly in the world, but i feel so loved here. i feel connected. i feel free, in a lot of ways...not so defined by the past of my country or my life. not so boxed in. not told every second how angry i am about things that i should be angry about but should never show that i'm angry about them because that intimidates everyone. no one is intimidated by me here.

and there are tears now because it feels so good not to be treated like every word out of my mouth is already chosen, therefore nothing i have to say could possibly be of any importance.

it does no good to play the comparison game, though. america would lose HARD. chicago would lose even harder.

people enjoy words here, and each other. people acknowledge the heavy weight that is ego and do their best to get out of the way. no one here wants to be famous and celebrity is considered ridiculous and vacuous. no one is packaged like meat here. there is no abundance of designer labels, no collective focus on "making it." it's refreshing.

there is pain here and sadness. there are secrets and the tensions that always exist between people.

there are words like maori and pakeha. always black and white. brown and white. whatever and white. indigenous and colonialist. settler cultures. but they talk about it. they talk a LOT. they keep talking. no one lets the rope slip that connects people. fingers are bleeding, but still they are clutching at what binds, at what is sacred.

i have found new best friends, people who i will talk to for the rest of my life. there is miriam, whose comment, whose touching of the thread is what brought me here. we are parallel versions of each other. both clumsy and jewish by blood, rather than belief. both touched wrongly and told to stay quiet. both fierce under hot lights and not taking anybody's no for know, or prayer for show. we spent nine months creating across time and ocean. we never even spoke before i got off the plane. some things can't be explained or divined. some things just are.

there is sabrina, who is a walking poem. sabs, as i call her in my mind, could easily coast on what she studied in college, could define herself narrowly through career and upcoming nuptials. she quietly refuses and that refusal is brilliant in its rarity and intention. she writes poems about what she sees and what she'd like to see. she smiles at me and cares about me when i don't eat enough. she is what poetry doesn't expect.

murray cares. he looks after folks. he makes sure people are well and he means it. he doesn't act out of obligation, which is rare. he takes his time on stage, which is rarer. he calls adaptors rockets and calls his girlfriend gorgeous when he picks up the phone. he reaches for the positive, the good and becomes a conduit for what is kind and right.

christian lives in a castle with erin. they have a feijoa tree in their back yard, which feels like the beginning and the end of the world. his poems try to bring order out of the confusion of humanity and color. he navigates between countries, languages and idealogies. he demands hope from the audience and he gets it. he gets it.

penny is the woman kind and generous enough to give me a place to stay at her home. it is magical. there is a lovely garden, exploding with colors and old bits of things. sunlight lays itself across her bed, wind rushes from front door to back and no matter where you are, you can see trees and the tops of things. penny frets about whether or not i'm eating enough and leaves the light on when i come back late, which has been every night. she is a writer, too, and a traveler. her capacity to do and to think and to be is the physical example of a life well-lived. she tells me to make myself at home. she gives me toast and fruit and avocado and coffee. she shows me how the details of caring are what underscore comfort. she is as magical as her house.

those are only a few people, though. so many more have been kind, welcoming, encouraging. dan, miriam's fiance, gives me books on nikola tesla to read and tells me about the best food. he shows my lover his garden and walks in the street to make cabs uncomfortable. shane has the only spoken word radio show in auckland called "dirty words." indirectly, his love for spoken word and poetry are what brought me here. thanks, man.

"The Phat Grrrl Diaries" is on its first shelf in a store. that store is the Women's Bookshop in Auckland. i asked a women's bookstore in Chicago if they wanted to sell my book. they never responded. from thousands of miles away, that just seems silly.

i feel like i've gotten out of quicksand and onto actual earth. maybe i needed to travel all along. maybe chicago's just not the place for me.

i don't miss it, actually. i miss my love, my family and a couple friends. that's it. the rest of it? the backbiting, the political bullshit that invades supposedly underground art, the ass-kissing, the lack of cultural analysis and artistic critique and how much is taken for granted? i don't miss any of that. and it doesn't appear like i'm missed in chicago, except by my love, my family and a couple friends. i'm homesick, but i keep realizing that i don't actually have a home in a city that treats me like i'm a stranger. i feel more loved in auckland than i ever have in america. what's that about?

in 10 days, i've done 10 interviews, 5 rehearsals and 2 shows. i'm living the life i've always wanted and it feels really good. the other life that i had before i came here, filled with tears and hurt and hard work that never seemed to amount to much, is gone. i'm not going back to that.

auckland has shown me what it means to be human, to have a mirror to my face, instead of a funhouse mirror being peddled as an everyday looking glass. auckland has shown me myself when i am not warped by manipulated history and uninformed opinions.

auckland has taught me what i've been aching to learn...what it means to be a poet.

just remember...

(This was written and posted by Nikki Patin on Facebook this morning, and she was pleased to share it with you all via the blog - we will never forget, Nikki!)

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!

After One Foot Forward

One Foot Forward hit the stage at the Lady Fisher Auditorium with Karen Hunter, Just the Tikit and Snapshots (the Literatti-student collaboration) on November 1st 2008. The show went really well, and clips have slowly started appearing on Youtube. We ended up with heaps of footage so it's taking a while to edit it all together. We dig performing in bars, street corners etc etc, but little can compare to a theatre stage and what you can do there. HUGE thanks from all of us to Kate Barton for her animations, as well as Erin Gaffney and Darcy Gladwin for their photographs. Also thanks to our sound technician Daniel Larsen for enduring endless technical rehearsals and making us sound great on the night!

Since then, there've been a few developments.

In order to work more on other things, Shane Hollands, founder of The Literatti, has left the group. He will be greatly missed by us, though we take comfort in knowing he's still gonna be around performing, so we won't have to miss out on his charismatic performances. The grapevine is whispering he's taking over the radio with his show 'Dirty Words' on Fleet FM.

Sabrina Muck joined the ranks back in late November and we're stoked. We performed together for the first time on December 2nd at Poetry Live. When our powers combine....awesome poetry is born.

We've have locked down the London bar on March 7th for our Auckland Fringe Festival gig, which is going to be WIKID. Nikki Patin, Def Jam poet and performance artist from Chicago, will be joining us for this one before she kicks off her nation-wide Phat Grrrl Revolution Tour. A 'little' show we've titled Growl. This is a collaboration of epic undertaking - we've been working on poems together via google documents for a couple of months now. When Nikki arrives in NZ on the 25th of Feb we'll have just over a week to rehearse together in person before Growl hits the stage. We can't wait.

And...(drum roll please)...Gravity Coffee has decided they dig what we do and want to sponsor us! This is some of the best news we've had in a while and opens up a whole host of other possibilities. Yay to Gravity!

Due to life getting in the way, master's theses and what not, The Literatti will be taking a break after the month of March (we have four gigs, Growl and then the Inhibition Exhibition series). We've decided it's time to lay low for a while, so we can focus on workshopping new material (we might open these sessions up, so keep an eye out for that) and just developing further.

Growl will be our only full length show for the year, so don't miss it, 'tis going to be grand. We will return in 2010 bigger, better and rearing to go.