Hollie McNish also known as Hollie Poetry,, is a British poet, author and spoken word artist. She lives near Cambridge in the UK. McNish has published five books of poetry: Papers, Cherry Pie, Why I Ride, Nobody Told Me, and Plum. Nobody Told Me won the 2016 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. She released an album of spoken word and music, Versus, recorded at Abbey Road Studios. A play co-written with Sabrina Mahfouz, Offside, played in theatres and was published as a book in 2017. She makes a living as a full-time poet, doing readings, and organising poetry classes and workshops, mostly in schools, often for pupils who are struggling.
A number of McNish's YouTube videos have gone viral and in 2015 her account had had over 4.1 million views. She received major national airplay on the BBC, first in January 2015 on Huw Stephens' BBC Radio 1 show and then in May 2015 on BBC Radio 1Xtra as part of a spoken word event. Her spoken word album, Versus, was released in September 2014 under the pseudonym Hollie Poetry. She recorded it at Abbey Road Studios and was the first poet to do so. It is "divided into two sides: one of straightforward spoken-word poetry, and the other featuring the same poems but with backing beats ". The album Poetry versus Orchestra has McNish's poetry "in combination with music written by composer and conductor Jules Buckley and played by the Metropole Orkest." McNish has collaborated with Kate Tempest and George the Poet and they appeared on stage with her during her 2015 tour. She co-wrote a play with Sabrina Mahfouz, Offside, that played in theatres in Harrogate and at Edinburgh Festival and was published as a book in 2017. McNish was also a vocal advocate for No More Page 3, and has produced poetry in support of the campaign. In 2016 BBC Radio 4Woman's Hour broadcast a 7 part radio short documentary series hosted by McNish entitled Becoming a Mother: A Hot Cup of Tea with Hollie McNish. In an interview with McNish for The Guardian in June 2017, Alice O'Keeffe described her book Nobody Told Me as,
"a scrappy, chaotic, heartfelt portrait of new motherhood, from the moment McNish found out she was pregnant to her daughter turning three. It includes diary entries, poems jotted in the dead of night and during nap-times, breathless musings on breastfeeding, sex after giving birth, and the state of the world."
She makes a living as a full-time poet, doing readings, and organising poetry classes and workshops, mostly in schools, often for pupils who are struggling. In 2018 poet Rebecca Watts refused to review Plum for P. N. Review, instead writing a polemical article titled "Cult of the Noble Amateur" in which she said: "Plum is the product not of a poet but of a personality. I was supposed to be reviewing it, but to do so for a poetry journal would imply that it deserves to be taken seriously as poetry. Besides, I was too distracted by the pathological attitude of its faux-naïve author, and too offended by its editor’s exemplary bad faith, to ignore the broader questions it provokes." This article received coverage in several national news outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC.
Publications
Poetry
Papers. London: Greenwich Exchange, 2012..
Cherry Pie. Burning Eye, 2015.. Illustrated by various artists and illustrators.
Why I Ride: Because a Bike Pedal Lasts Longer Than a Gas Tank. Brattleboro, VT: Green Writers Press, 2015..
Nobody Told Me: Poetry and Parenthood. London: Blackfriars, 2016..
