Long before she quit her day job and adopted the stage name Hollie Poetry, Hollie McNish was scribbling poems on whatever surface she could find. She started at the age of four, and when we meet she is clutching a folder full of her teenage work. “They’re terrible,” she laughs. “They’re mainly about sex and not getting into nightclubs.”
But she kept writing, slowly developing her poetry until, aged 23, her partner urged her to start reading it out loud for other people. It took her a year of attending a poetry night in Covent Garden, London, to work up the courage to go on stage, but once she started there was no stopping her and soon she was attending open-mic nights up and down the country. “I still get scared though,” she says. “Standing on the stage makes me want to vomit before most gigs.”
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