I went to see the amazing Hollie McNish last night, part of Hebden Bridge Arts Festival. I saw Hollie perform last year at Hope Baptist as a solo gig and last night she was joined by “Scottish writer and poet Michael Pedersen and Shetland writer, singer-songwriter and all round lovely man Malachy Tallack as they read and sing in the beautiful Hope Chapel”.
Michael was very entertaining and had the interludes down to a fine art, segwaying unscripted/semiscripted ‘chat’ with ‘poetry’ very smoothly. I thought these interlude moments were particularly interesting and more of him than his published poems which were the more crafted elements. Perhaps stand-up/improv is his calling.
Unfortunatey I was in too much pain to register Malachy’s words but standing up at the back somewhat resolved the pain for Hollie’s performances. She was great and again it was fascinating to see how her words are performed time and time again, afresh. She mentioned ‘a group of midwives who accosted her in Leeds’ after one gig and voiced their disappointment that she didn’t perform Embarassed.
I know that group of amazing women, not all midwives but certaily pro-breastfeeding feminists, and I only missed that outing because I was either very heavily pregnant or just given birth. They asked, post-gig, for Hollie to please read that poem, as it meant so much to them, and she generously obliged. Hollie cites this experience in her performance back in Hebden and says she feels she must read this poem every time she’s back in the area. I’m glad she does choose that poem to read as it’s so brilliant but I’m also grateful she entertains that dialogue with her audience and blurs the boundary between on and off stage.
