What is the show?
This year, She Grrrowls is bringing six artists to Edinburgh Fringe Festival, with two acts joining me (Carmina Masoliver) each night. These include Jess Green, Afshan D'souza, Shagufta K. Iqbal, Celeste Ramos, Rowena Knight, and Amani Saeed. Each show will also feature a different special guest and open mic. It will be held at Banshee Labyrinth's Banqueting Hall as part of the PBH Free Fringe.
What difference will your support make?
The show is free to enter, as with PBH Free Fringe we gain the venue for free. But we really need support to help with costs including:
- Travel and accommodation
- Living expenses in Edinburgh
- Flyers and promotion
Per person, it costs approximately £450 for 3 weeks accommodation (based on staying in a 10 person hostel room), let's say around £100 for food, and around £150 for flyers. This doesn't even go into the amount of work you do to promote the show - a pretty tough job when there are literally thousands of other shows on (not to mention the creative and organisation work that goes into actually putting on a show!) Multiply this modest cost by 7 and you get just under £5000. Last year, I did this all alone, but this time I am asking these six artists to join me to make the show really stand out, so I owe it to them to try to crowdfund to help with these costs.
Showcasing women and non-binary people in the arts, supporting this means you're playing a part in putting womxn's voices centre stage and allowing them the space to speak on issues in a safe space, where audience members who may not otherwise hear them can come to share in this experience.
You can join see full details of the show here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/she-grrrowls-at-edinburgh-fringe-festival-pbh-free-fringe-tickets-47902129559
What is She Grrrowls anyway?
She Grrrowls has been going in London since 2013 at various venues across the city, featuring various artists of different genres who are women or non-binary. After a hiatus while I was living and working abroad, it came back in 2017. At the same time, the She Grrrowls anthology was published by Burning Eye Books - one of the leading publishers in spoken word poetry in the UK (and I have just received funding for a book tour in autumn). We also did a segment at Women of the World Festival, and have also previously spoken at other events such as Goldsmith University's conference 'The Place for Poetry'.
Who am I?
I am a poet from south London, and founder of She Grrrowls feminist arts nights. I became freelance in October 2017. My chapbook was published by Nasty Little Press in 2014 and I'm currently (or after the fringe) working on a show about quietness as well as some new books in the pipeline. I was long-listed for the Young Poet Laureate for London award in 2013, and the inaugural Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowships in 2017. Alumni of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, and resident artists as part of Kid Glove, I was also a member of Burn After Reading. I have featured at nights such as Bang Said the Gun, and festivals including Latitude, Bestival and Lovebox both as a collective and individually. I performed internationally whilst living abroad, both in Singapore (just after a summer in Vietnam), and in Cordoba in Spain as part of an international festival 'Grito de Mujer' where my poetry was translated into Spanish. In 2017, I programmed 40 acts for She Grrrowls across the whole run at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Previously a winner of the Poetry Rivals Slam, most recently I was longlisted for the Out-Spoken Prize for Performance Poetry.
What about the other artists?
You can find out more about the other artists joining the She Grrrowls line-up this year as regular feature acts by visiting the links below. Three of these poets are from The Yoni-Verse Collective, which you can also find out about here: https://www.yoniversepoetrycollective.com/
Jess Green: https://www.jessgreenpoet.com/homepage
Afshan D'souza: http://afshanlodhi.com/
Shagufta K. Iqbal: http://www.shaguftakiqbal.com/
Celeste Ramos: https://celesteramoswriter.wordpress.com/
Rowena Knight: http://www.valleypressuk.com/author/70/rowena_knight
Amani Saeed: https://www.amani.life/