Speak out
H
ollie McNish is drinking fruit tea and wearing a huge jumper emblazoned with a bear.
Since we last spoke in 2013, the Cambridge poet has scrapped the fear of doing a gig on her own and is preparing for a bona fide tour. It’s a fairly new thing in itself; a touring poet.
Aside from Peterborough’s Mark Grist and the Mercury Prize nominated Kate Tempest, Hollie’s testing new ground, and you’ll get to see her do it at Cambridge Junction. “Whenever people ask who [my tour agency] are working with and they say a poet, everyone laughs, it’s really annoying,” she says. “I wanna prove that it can work.” Taking inspiration from stand-up comics, she’s successfully put off pressure to get more theatrical. “Whenever you start doing things on your own in poetry lots of people push you towards doing Edinburgh, in a more theatrical sense, but I’m totally rubbish at that. Honestly, the idea of doing more than standing on a stage and reading a poem and just talking to people; I just don’t know if I could do it ever. “I did try,” she laughs. “I had a director for a day at Battersea Arts Centre and he was trying to make me walk across the stage, and even doing that I was walking like a robot.” If you haven’t come across Hollie’s work before (shame on you), head immediately to YouTube. You’ll find poems on immigration, football, parenthood and breastfeeding. Her most famous of which, Embarrassed, has more than one million hits and garners quite a reaction if she doesn’t perform it – a group of midwives in Leeds cornered her and demanded she read it in the lobby after a gig once. “It’s really exciting, it’s a bit surreal to be honest,” buzzes Hollie on the way things have progressed, explaining how she’s also co-writing a play about the incredible history of women’s football with fellow spoken word artist Sabrina Mahfouz, and putting together an illustrated edition of her pregnancy and parenthood diaries. “Most days I’m just really tired and taking my daughter to school and doing loads of emailing. And then every now and again going and standing on stage and reading poems, it’s a bit odd, it’s like a split life. “Most of the people I work with are in central London, so their idea of poetry is very different, they’re like: ‘It’s everywhere now’. No, it’s nowhere, what are you talking about?! I’m very grateful to have it as a job. My mum still thinks it’s hilarious that I even read any of my poems out. “Like the thing at the Junction [Hollie’s poem
Raspberries was printed on a massive banner for the Women of the World Festival] she’s like: ‘It’s weird isn’t it Hollie?’ And it’s been about six years now.” Can she remember her first poem? “There’s two, they have the same date on them and age 6 or 7. I always wrote my age on my all poems, and the date, and the time normally – still do, ha.” There was one about her dad that rhymed with short and fat and one about litter picking at school. “I know it all – I don’t want to bore you with it – but it’s basically ‘meadows brown and green, rainbows in the sky’, blah blah blah. “I was a total geek at school – still am – I used to file all my poems in this special folder that I thought was amazing, this leather folder with a velvety inside. I put all my secret poems in the back. I wrote one called Love when I was about 9 and put stickers all over it,” she laughs. “I used to draw pictures on all of them until I was about 16 probably. I was going to say 12, but I think I was a bit older! Haha.” Having typed them all up and organised them into categories (“It’s really funny to look back on”) she reckons the ones about sex are the most entertaining to re-read. “They got stronger as I got to 17: ‘Still not having sex/I don’t care anymore!’ Even though I did. The worst one I wrote was: ‘I am the last leaf in autumn’. Hollie come on! There are loads of comparisons like that. An ice cube waiting to melt I think I was one day, and a lonely boat in the sea,” she says. “They haven’t changed that much, they’re still kind of moany and they all rhyme in the same way. I don’t know if my poetry’s got any better since I was 6! “The more I read, the more I write basically,” she says, explaining how she’s often inspired by books rather than teenage angst. Currently it’s The Beauty Myth by Naomi Woolf, feeding a fascination with how women’s issues are covered and discussed.
making a point
“When you write about women’s issues there’s this barricade of hatred against you, but women’s magazines are the only thing really written for women, so of course you wanna read them,” she muses. “I know some of them are crap but they’re not all rubbish. If you pick up ELLE, at least they shove all the adverts at the front.” The night before our chat, Hollie stayed up until 2am, lost in the murky depths of YouTube’s comment section, researching links and quotes on how few women play instruments in music videos because it makes people feel uncomfortable, after someone stated it was nonsense. CAMBRIDGE MAGAZINE
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Bright, funny and to the point, spoken word artist Hollie McNish is as direct and impressive as her poems. Ahead of a headline poetry tour, Ella Walker gets a glimpse into her world. Main picture by Richard Patterson
interview
“This guy was saying: ‘Women’s salaries are no different now, they don’t get portrayed differently in the media, what about men? Men have problems with suicide rates and depression’.” She pauses. “That’s a different issue. It’s so weird, I don’t think there’s any other issue where somebody says, ‘Let’s help children who are homeless’, and someone says ‘Well, that’s ridiculous, there are other children that have illnesses but they’re not homeless’. Nobody does that. “It just baffles me. I don’t know why so many people are too angry to admit there are issues.” Isn’t it a dangerous habit to get sucked into comment threads?
•Hollie McNish, Cambridge Junction, Tuesday, May 5 at 8pm. Tickets £11 from (01223) 511511/junction.co.uk.
“I learn loads in the comments,” Hollie says enthusiastically. “The poem I put up about breastfeeding was two years after I’d written it, so when people put comments up like: ‘You wouldn’t pee or poo in a restaurant, so why would you breastfeed? It’s still something coming out of your body, it’s just the same’. I was like, I know that’s not the case but I’m not really sure what to say. And then there’d be like 50 midwives saying: ‘That’s CAMBRIDGE MAGAZINE
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unhygienic, they’re full of bacteria, milk doesn’t have bacteria’.” “It’s good but it is aggravating sometimes,” she admits. “There’s only so many times you can be called an ugly rat. The actual insults I don’t care about, it’s more if I really believe something and I want to put the point across, especially about things to do with immigration. “I don’t know every fact obviously, but I’ve read a lot about it, I did my masters on development and economics. People just assume you have no background in anything you’re talking about, especially as a female. I get a lot of comments saying: ‘I like your poems on relationships and boyfriends, but stick to things you know’, as if I know more about boyfriends than what I did a masters in. The assumptions are amazing.” But the reactions are what she’s in it for. “The thing I love the most is coming off stage and talking to people afterwards. I used to find it nerve-wracking and sometimes I’d hide in the toilets to be honest, but now, I love it.”