Events

Maritime Radio 95.6 FM launch on 20 April 2019,
“A Love Song to Greenwich and Woolwich” by NJ Hynes

Upcoming residency at Djerassi Foundation,
California, in 2020

South Bank Poetry Library Residency and Commission

On 16 October 2016, I presented newly commissioned work on the theme of “Living in Future Times” at the Saison Poetry Library, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank.

This was part of the annual Poetry Library Open Day, where library staff gather up some treasures of rare works and new aquisitions from the collection and present them to the public for a day.

I read alongside the wonderful poets Nancy Campbell and Nisha Ramayyah, each of us responding to some of the Open Day texts.  My inspiration came from Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip, an explosive experiment with language and memory, based on text from an 18th-century court case involving the murder of around 150 slaves, thrown overboard by the ship’s captain, who believed that the company could then claim insurance for their loss.

World Poetry Day Video

In honour of World Poetry Day, Live Canon posted a video of my poem “Currents”, beautifully read by Mairin O’Hagan.

The 154 Project

I was one of 154 poets invited by Live Canon to respond to Shakespeare’s sonnets, in this anniversary year of his birth.  Our poetic responses were published by Live Canon in an anthology and performed at the Victoria and Albert Museum on 24 April 2016.

I responded to Sonnet 7. It’s not a sonnet I knew; I asked Live Canon to select a sonnet for me, wanting the challenge and open to serendipity.  As I’ve been working on celestial bodies, the imagery was appealing.  But the sonnet’s tone and repeated association of the sun with a masculine life cycle irritated me. I particularly disliked the final couplet, which insists that you must have a son to be remembered (to not “diest”).  Daughters, apparently, won’t do. My response was fired by feminism.

Sonnet 7 (Wm Shakespeare)

Lo! in the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, ‘fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon
Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.

Eclipsed (NJ Hynes)

The dogs howl and household gods shiver
as the sun is dimmed and living colour dies,
a world reduced to black and white – but tides
continue to rise. The moon draws to her
growing seas and awkward monthly pains;
her milky light is gone, yet she covers
the golden sun, casts a shadow over
its flame. Her gravity and mass remain
even when her features disappear;
a stoic lid to the star’s burning light.
Unlike the sun, she will always stay near,
whether full or perilously slight.
Now be glad, dear woman, expectant one,
for a moon-faced daughter – not a son.

Links.
http://www.livecanon.co.uk/coming-up-154

Health tips for the year ahead, 2013

The images below are from a poetry and art installation at Greenwich Theatre in 2013, devised by Live Canon with the artist  Anna Bruder and  inspired by my poem, “Health Tips for the Year Ahead”, which had been shortlisted for the Live Canon poetry competition the previous year. There were files with poetry “prescriptions” for every malady, a chill out poetry lounge, and poems written on each wall.