A rare chance to perform at a major European music festival, I was invited to present a new work for the 2016 Airwaves festival in Reykjavik, for their Airwords programme. The lineup for the evening including friends Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir and Crispin Best, but also John Lydon of the sex pistols amongst others. The evening was eclectic, as the whole experience was, being bussed around with indie bands, the whole city swelling with drunk music goers and me hiding in my hotel writing and preparing my performance. I had time to meet friends old and new and was treated to great hospitality.
The work I eventually presented was really another collaboration with the amazing Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir, whom I take to be one of a dozen or so European poets who are genuinely breaking new ground and influence my thought process every time I see them / work with them. I began with some slightly twisting / deliberately complex rhetoric with a few set ups, all aiming to establish a certain expectation and engagement from the audience, and then with Asta’s help, began to create inexplicable and fundamentally awkward performative shifts.
My second trip to Iceland in 2016 and a completely original one, with huge thanks to Andri Snær Magnason, Asta and all my Icelandic friends who keep making their country a place of inspiration for my work.
