Astrid solace

Describe yourself in 3 words…

– Succinct
–

What inspires you?

I’m inspired by this idea that one day, my future grandchildren could be digging through a
cobweb-filled attic, long after I’ve passed, and find an old box labeled ‘Why I Was Put on
This Earth’. And after blowing off the dust, they search through the box and find the work I
have published, and recordings of my performances. They would barely be able to tell it was
me.
“God, she looked so pretty back then.”
“I guess we know where I get my good looks…”
Then after an afternoon of discovering this life I had lived long ago, they could come back
down the stairs and after a moment their kids would come running up to them and ask “You
were up there for ages! Did you find any old and cherished memories of great grandma Astrid?”And my grandkids would share a glance, and then laugh, and whisper to each other “Honestly I can’t imagine anything more embarrassing than being a poet, let’s just keep this whole thing to ourselves, shall we?”

Tell us about your worst ever gig?

Not exactly a gig but recently I was in an uber and the driver asked me what I do for a living
so I said “oh I’m a comedy poet” so he says “ok hit me, give me a poem, make me laugh.”
My mind went completely blank so I just tried to explain the plot of Robots (2005) and pass
it off as my own material. I was able to pass off the weird names by just insisting that my
“friends” (the characters of the hit movie Robots (2005)) were all nonbinary and chose
obscure names so people wouldn’t assign them a gender based of off their names alone.
Anyway, all was going well until we got to the scene in the boarding house and when I insist
to this uber driver that I know someone called “Aunt Fanny.” Uber driver goes crazy, starts
laughing his head off. He turns around to me and says “you ain’t half bad, y’know that
Astrid?” and I say “shouldn’t you be keeping your eyes on the road?” And that’s the story of
the second time my poetry got me into a car crash. Sorry, what was the question again?

What’s your number one poetry pet peeve?

(This one isn’t a joke answer)
People not giving trigger warnings when covering sensitive topics. Yeah, I know I have blue hair & I look like the kind of person who gets annoyed by this kind of thing but come on. You as a performer may have gone through a traumatic experience. And you may find that you get a lot out of writing and performing poetry about said traumatic experience, so the least the audience can do is sit through you talking about something when you’re the one who had to go through it, right? No! This opinion is bad and self-centered and does not anticipate the possibility that someone who you are performing to may have JUST gone through a similar experience, and might not necessarily want to be confronted with that right this second. Or maybe they do, but give them the option ahead of time to decide that for themselves. Trigger warning your work. No it isn’t “spoilers”

Whose words do you love at the moment?

For poetry I keep coming back to my good friend & cohost (big up @PrettyPrivilegePoetry)
Memory Bhunu. Before reading their pamphlet Memory Flowers I had little appreciation for
poetic form, but as it increasingly becomes of interest to me, their work is something I just
keep on coming back to.

For comedy, Tim Key’s Chapters is the thing that has really helped me figure out exactly how
absurd I want to and am allowed to be in my own comedic writing.
For life, I really love Baz Luhrmann’s Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen). It’s a song that
would come on in the car a lot growing up that I had somewhat forgotten about until
recently, but in the past few weeks its done that thing where something that you used to
think about just keeps coming up in conversations seemingly out of nowhere? I love that.

What piece of advice would you give to your younger self?

I suppose it depends on how much younger? If she’s 18 or below then I’d probably just say
“hey you’re actually a girl, go use your parent’s credit card to buy oestrogen on the dark
web”. If she’s between 19 and 22 then id say “hey you have ADHD, go use your flatmate’s
credit card to buy Adderall on the dark web”. Any older than that and I’d probably tell her
that eating breakfast is good actually – and maybe slow down on stealing other people’s
credit cards.

What three items would you bring with you on a deserted island?

1. A big tarpaulin to go over the sand (I hate the feeling of sand)
2. A bunch of large blankets to go over the tarpaulin (I hate the feeling of tarpaulin)
3. A notebook to write in (which I would then immediately regret because I forgot to
   ask if I could bring a pen to write in it with)