Creative Practice
In my creative practice I work across poetry, performance and prose. The key terms I work with include refusal, artifice, the banal, rage, comedy and borders. I am interested in cruelty, performance/the performative, queerness and class. A selection are below.
I've been a part of Soho Theatre Writers' Lab and The Almeida Young Company.
Poetry
Women Poets' Prize 2022
I was shortlisted for the 2022 Prize alongside many other excellent people.
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Modern Queer Poets 2020 edited by Richard Porter, Pilot Press
Alongside Eileen Myles, Wayne Kostenbaum, CA Conrad Sophie Robinson and more, I was selected in 2020 as a featured poet showcasing contemporary queer poets. The anthology is now found at the National Poetry Library, Antenne Books, Printed Matter, Inc, Mast Books, Donlon Books, Tenderbooks, Tate Modern Bookshop, Rare Mags, Tate Modern Bookshop, Tom of Finland Book Store, After Eight Books and more.
Verve Anthology 2020 edited by Andrew McMillan, Verve Poetry Press
I was selected by poet Andrew McMillan as a featured poet for the 'diversity' issue of the annual Verve Poetry Press Anthology, culminating in a set of readings at Verve Poetry Festival 2020, Birmingham. The set of poems looked at sculpture, home and separation, creating a portrait of queer home-making and un-making.
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Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival 2021
I was selected as part of the Bad Betty Press showcase for emerging poets during the annual Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival, hosted online. Reading poems from a new pamphlet-in-progress.
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Another Country, The Word Berlin 2022
I was selected as part of a series of showcases in February, March and April for queer writers and poets around a rotating theme hosted by Another Country bookshop at The Word lending library and literary event space in Schönberg. I performed in tandem with developing a poetry collection.
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Performance
Impasto, ACUD Theatre Berlin 2022
Impasto was commissioned by ACUD Theater Berlin in 2022. "Impasto" is a solo performance by Maria Leonard that plays with the writer-performer-director hierarchy. Using nonlinear narrative strategies interspersed with poetry, physicality and rage, Impasto focuses on the inventive ways temporality, the future, queerness and the desire to ‘get free’ through physical exercise and the backdrop of neoliberal austerity plays out in the balance of failure and chaos. Tickets and information are here.
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Praxis, Soho Upstairs
Praxis was performed at Soho Theatre. The backdrop comic-drama of fictional meetings between Stalin and Lenin highlights the importance of always acknowledging the domestic staff, as Lenin's cleaning lady don't care for theory, and she's been taking notes.
Kitchen Sink Art, Soho Upstairs
We've got an iPhone and an open call application for an exhibition in front of us. One of us would rather lie on the square kitchen table right now. One of us would rather make art. Who wins? Performed at Soho Upstairs, Soho Theatre.
Soho Theatre Writers' Lab
Resident writer at Soho Theatre. The Writers’ Lab programme is designed to support new playwrights to create a full-length play or piece of theatre. I went through a three-draft process with one-to-one dramaturgy support, resulting in a performance at Soho Theatre.
SketchFest, The Almeida Theatre
Sketchfest was the culmination of an 8-week writing project. I wrote and co-produced sketches, monologues, vignettes and scenes, and put them all together into one piece of theatre, a showcase titled Love, Death and the Underground for a cast of 10 Almeida Young Friends to perform.
Bryony Kimmings Performance Art Programme, Young Almeida
As part of Almeida LAB, I was selected and supported by performance artist Bryony Kimmings to develop and devise new solo performance art. Concepts included autobiography and 'social experiment', leading to a script-in-hand showcase with the Young Friends Touring Company.
One Night Stand, The Room Above Theatre
Written and produced with Yossi Rayner, a monologue performed as part of the One Night Stand showcase at The Room Above Theatre, Bristol, on ritual, the spirit of punk, and the Women's Institute.
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