The Selkie, Self-Belief, and Asking for Help #theselkie

By the time this gets posted, I will have just started my first full performance of The Selkie in front of Actual People in nearly two years. I think it’s fair to say that I’m nervous. I’m also launching my fundraiser, and that’s pretty scary as well, but for other reasons (namely: I’m crap at asking for help; help!).

Two years ago, I finished tinkering with my first solo show, The Selkie: A Song of Many Waters. It’s an hour-long show that celebrates a modern life mythologised, where nearly all the characters are mythological, fairytale, or everyday creatures. I wanted to explore what it meant to be someone who know that they’re different, but not how or why, and the journey they take to discover that. Using the analogy of a selkie – a Celtic sea creature that looks like a seal until it sheds its skin to look human – that didn’t know that its transformative pelt had been taken from it at birth. The Selkie in this tale grows up able to do amazing things with its voice, but also somewhat shunned as an anomaly.

At the end of nearly two years of development I had a show I was proud of – people seemed to enjoy it, using some very complimentary terms (and some technical language that was new to me) to say how much it spoke to them, how much it moved them.

I had created something that dipped and weaved between performance poetry, storytelling, and song, with elements of the traditional weaved with the modern. It made people laugh – for which I wasn’t entirely prepared! – and cry – about which I felt a bit guilty, as well as expressing all sorts of emotions in between.

After some previews, I performed it for a week at Edinburgh Fringe, after two weeks of running other shows, came home, and abruptly got ill. Very ill. I lost my voice for nine months; lost far more weight than I could easily afford, unable to eat much. I couldn’t sleep unless I sat up, and even then only for snatches of time before I stopped breathing. Every night for months.

Frankly: it was a bit rubbish. Also: somewhat frightening, to say the least. And, on top of that, I’d lost – I thought, perhaps, forever – one of the things that informed my identity – made me… me…

The real irony was that this came hot on the heels of performing a show about a creature whose power – and weakness – is bound up in its voice, while watching my career as a vocal artist vanish.
As I started to recover, I got the news that The Selkie had been shortlisted for a Saboteur Award for best Spoken Word Show. In case you don’t know: this is a Big Deal in the spoken word world, and I was over the moon!

Luckily, I currently have a better handle on my health, and my voice has recovered somewhat. I’ve decided to bring The Selkie back to life – give her a voice again. I’ll be performing the show at Edinburgh Fringe 4th-11th August at 52 Canoes, Grassmarket, 12:30pm every day except Wednesday 8th, and – for once – I’ve decided to ask for people’s help to make this happen.

I’m going with the Free Fringe, as ever – they make it easy for both artists and audiences to take risks by not charging either a penny. However, as artists, we’re reliant on audience donations to help offset our costs, and getting audiences in costs money.

Publicity, accommodation, transport, props, hiring a technician to provide music cues, insurance, costume – they all cost money. And creating merchandise to sell to try to recoup some of that cash means spending money up-front. In all it costs between one and two thousand pounds to take a show run of eleven days up to The Fringe. And no – there are no official grants available!

I have to work part-time because my health isn’t strong enough, and having chronic health conditions costs money in itself. Yay. But I thought that, instead of owning the bank interest, I’d owe you a reward – far more satisfying! If you donate, you can claim from a range of returns on your investment from a hearty thanks, a badge, the book or CD of the show, prints of the beautiful artwork by Sa’adiah Khan, to a writing or performance coaching session with me, or various other rewards. And you can tell everyone that you’re an official patron of the arts, as well as earning my undying gratitude, and helping to ensure that more people get to enjoy the show!

Thanks for reading, and hopefully see you soon!

Tooling Up - #napowrimo, #saboteur17, and stuff

It’s been a long few months, but, with the sunshine and all of that stuff, I finally feel like I’m turning a corner.

My health is (slowly - so slowly) improving, and my voice appears to be returning to something like its original mellifluousness. This will be a relief to everyone, I’m sure (though most of all for the people who’ve had to listen to me squeak and grate and despair about laryngitis as the days turned into weeks turned into months).

The opportunity for Something Exciting turned up recently. I won’t know for two months whether I’ve been successful, but it’s been an amazing opportunity to review what I’ve done with poetry and other artforms and poets and other artists over the last few years, and it turns out that it’s a great deal, and some of it brilliant. So I now have a nice, portable poetry CV to hand and plenty of buzzphrases about my “practice” to recycle for other opportunities.

In the meantime, NaPoWriMo approacheth, and I’m feeling pretty confident about it this time. Since I lost all momentum on getting The Selkie any further after Edinburgh (did I mention I lost my voice - I feel sure I must have done...), I’ve decided to deliberately give it (and my vocal chords) a further rest before trotting it out to other places next year. Since I spent an enormous quantity of energy on The Selkie last year, my NaPoWriMo efforts definitely suffered. You can follow what I post publicly here.

In the meantime, though, if you liked it, you can nominate it for a Saboteur Award and frankly I would just explode with excitement if it made the shortlist (let alone won), so if seeing a grown woman run around and around her kitchen/ garden (depending on weather) like a hyperactive five-year-old is your idea of a reward, I will totally film that if I get shortlisted. Get clicking.

For other entries, you should also consider nominating Allographic Open Mic/ Hammer & Tongue Cambridge for best regular show, Haiku To F*ck To (Spark The Words)/ In Other Words Anthology 2016 for best anthology, Poetry & Piano (Matt Widgery accompanying Nikki Marrone, Uppahar Ups Subba, and Tim Knight) for best collaboration, Bunbury Magazine/ The Fenland Reed for best magazine, SHINPRINT (publishing arm of SHINDIG) for most innovative publisher, Knots & Branches (Stewart Carswell)/ Years Ago You Coloured Me (J.S.Watts) for best single collection. In Other Words would love your vote for Best Wildcard... 

My choices are arbitrary and personal and partly to do with who I think needs the kind of boost that a Saboteur Award would bring. I'm bound to have missed someone. I'm sorry.

Best solo artist is a terrifyingly open field. PM me if you want a suggestion to fit your tastes...