~ Channel 4 ~
Embarrassed by Hollie McNish
https://vimeo.com/153781706
Hollie McNish is a British spoken-word poet with a very popular YouTube channel. Her description for “Embarrassed“:
This poem is taken from my book Nobody Told Me: a journey from pregnancy to pre-school in poetry and prose: http://www.blackfriarsbooks.com/book/nobody-told-me/
“The World Needs this Book” The Scotsman
“a moving and profoundly personal account” The SkinnyThe video was directed by Jake Dypka with Indy 8 for Channel 4 Random Acts with help from hundreds up people via a KickStarter campaign.
Why is titillation accepted and sustenance rejected?
Nobody Told Me has just won the prestigious Ted Hughes poetry award.
Singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams, who judged the prize with poets Jo Bell and Bernard O’Donoghue, said the book “should be sold alongside Caitlin Moran and Bill Bryson. Honest and insightful, it will resonate outside the poetry world to reach a new generation of poetry readers.”
The collection covers all aspects of motherhood, challenging taboos about post-pregnancy sex and breastfeeding as well as the sense of isolation and loss many women feel after giving birth. It also celebrates the joys of having a young child. On publication, the Guardian wrote that “her poems can often sound like love letters to her daughter and each phase of babyhood”.
The Cambridge graduate has earned a reputation for breaking new ground with poetry and performances that straddle the literary and pop scenes. As well as becoming the first poet to record an album at Abbey Road, McNish has collaborated with rapper George the Poet and Kate Tempest, who won the Ted Hughes award in 2012. Her YouTube videos have been viewed more than four million times.
The ABC of Insanity by Andy Parkinson
One of the more ingenious performance poetry videos I’ve seen. Here are the details from the Vimeo description:
In fond memory of Andy Parkinson who wrote and performed the poem.
Music by Matthew Marks
Part of Insight In Mind produced by Swings and Roundabouts with a Mind Millennium Award and previously seen on Channel 4
Initiated and produced by Penny Arnold
Directed by Daniel Saul 2002
Insight in Mind is a 27-minute video containing 14 poetic pieces, of which this was one.
‘Insight In Mind’ vividly demonstrates how it feels to experience highs and lows, through the use of poetry, visual imagery, photography, animation and music; taking the viewer on an emotional and informative journey.
The 14 poetic pieces are interwoven with the voices of survivors and carers, talking openly about their experiences, married with artworks contributed from mental health survivors.Throughout the film, with the exception of two performers, everyone you see or hear has personal experience of bipolar disorder or depression, or are carers for people who have these experiences. This includes the recorded voice-overs which were edited together from interviews with survivors and carers. Alongside these spoken sections of the film are over 200 artworks by survivors of bipolar disorder or depression. The poems and artworks were selected from material contributed during the research undertaken by ‘Swings and Roundabouts’.
Andy Parkinson, AKA Andy Postman, was one of the five members of Swings and Roundabouts, and died in 2008. There’s a tribute page to him on the same website. It begins:
Andy Parkinson, also known to many as Andy Postman sadly passed away aged 53 in October 2008 from a sudden heart attack, a condition that runs in his family.
Andy made an incredible contribution to Insight in Mind. He was an inspiration to us during the planning and production of the film, with his stream of infectious and elaborate ideas. He wrote 4 (and adapted another) of the poems in the film and conceived many of the ideas for the filming of 2 of the poems, Mutter and ABC which begin and end Insight in Mind. Andy put an extraordinary amount of careful consideration into the construction of these pieces.
