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Available for over a year

Performance poet Hollie McNish writes a Letter to London Dear London Sometimes I feel like punching you in the face Sitting directly on or bashing through your fence Sometimes I like to pretend I've never heard of you Like who? Where? Puzzled face, eyebrows down, hands pressed to mouth Thinking, No, I don't think I know that one London? Where's that then? As if I have not heard a whisper of that London-something-place people say is the centre of our country South in fact It's not as central as all that It seems Leeds may be more placed for that London, yeah I know it The place where nights are light up where every decision ever made in government is written up And the way rich people talk is held up by my Glasgow grandmas as the voice we should all strive for, the afternoon drama narrators of radio 4, they say the man down the street was taught to talk like that at private school and now gets paid a lot The place where shops don't shut. And which sometimes acts as though outside its East and West and North and South which all look quite the same to me is a black cloud full of small unimportant towns and villages where people sit and dream like hobbits driving tractors arrive school on horses, vote for BNP and spout small town racist thoughts Backwards Sometimes I think London thinks everyone outside its streets walk backwards London, I work with you a lot. You ask me to come to you to read my poems for gigs in clubs in theatres to meet and chat and I know immediately from your emails that it's you because you do not state the place You are the only emailer I get that does not state the place, as if London is the default point from which all points relate Dear Hollie, you say Are you free to do a gig at this time on this date. Dear Hollie Are you free to meet up at this time on this date And I love writing back to your London emails London To ask where it will be? Is that in Manchester, I say? Or Glasgow maybe? Where is it? Just to remind you that not everyone meets up in just one city London I don't know how many times I have to tell people I'm not from you Born in Reading, schooled in Newbury, nights in Thatcham Now living in a flat in the back of a village My shops have never been open late like yours I love you London but some people here are scared of you Of your theatres and museums and underground and people sprinting round and round and late night streets and late night crime and heaving busy city fuss We have one bus But London, I know you're scared of us. Of places you have never been Of smaller towns and village greens that that did not used to be the Queen's back garden I pick blackberries on saturdays At night there is not a sound outside my window and I wake up to the birds There is no youth club Or Arts Centre Or Southbank workshop group Or roundhouse spoken word Poetry slams Battersea Writing retreats One fish and chips, three pubs and fifty seven trees stand on my street Perhaps one day you'd like to come and visit me. Instead. There's one bus. If you're brave enough Get on it. Yours, Hollie.