With Benjamin Zephaniah stating ‘I can’t take my ears off her’, Kate Tempest describing her poetry as ‘welcoming, galvanising and beautiful’ and fans ranging from Emma Watson, Robin Ince, Pink and Tim Minchin, Ted Hughes Award winner Hollie McNish is a poet whose readings are not to be missed. She is an Arts Foundation Fellow in Spoken Word, has garnered over ten million YouTube views for her online poetry performances and was the first poet to record at London’s famed Abbey Road Studios.
Her collection, Nobody Told Me, for which she won the Ted Hughes award and for which The Scotsman claimed ‘The world needs this book’, has been translated into French, Spanish and German.
Here, she will be joining us to perform poems, read from and chat honestly and openly from her latest poetry collections.
Expect strong language as she talks fruit and flesh, guilt, sex, politics, death, breasts, transformers and more.
Books will be available to purchase at the event. There will be a book signing afterwards
Hollie McNish is a poet based between Cambridge and Glasgow. She loves writing poetry. She has published three poetry collections Papers, Cherry Pie and Plum, and one poetic memoir on politics and parenthood, Nobody Told Me, of which the Scotsman suggested “The world needs this book” and for which she won the Ted Hughes Award. In 2017 Nobody Told Me was translated into German, French and Spanish and released in the USA.
In 2016 she co-wrote a play Offside with Sabrina Mahfouz, relating the two hundred year history of UK women’s football.
Hollie tours continuously all over the UK and Europe and beyond and is a big fan of online readings – her poetry videos have attracted millions of views worldwide.
The Sun Ra Arkestra, under the able direction of altosaxophonist Marshall Allen since Sun Ra left the planet in 1993, returns to Edinburgh in April.
James Yorkston returns to Summerhall to celebrate the release of his new album The Route to the Harmonium on Feb 22nd 2019. With support from Viking Moses.
Grace Petrie is a folk singer, songwriter and activist from Leicester, UK, she has been writing, recording and touring relentlessly ever since. Her unique takes on life, love and politics, and the warmth and wit with which they are delivered, have won over audiences everywhere.
Hip-hop activist Lowkey makes a triumphant return to the live scene off the back of Ghosts of Grenfell – a devastating event that he witnessed first hand.