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nina-marie gardner

Recent bests...

5/19/2017

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So I'm blogging again. I guess I like it because it's kind of old school - now everyone's blasting out their lives to the masses on Instagram, Twitter and  Facebook. Although I am on Facebook as I find it useful for staying in the loop about literary events, theatre etc., as well as keeping in touch with certain old friends, I find Instagram and Twitter a bit horrifying (but that's just me). Too much exposure (and yet, the old-fashioned blog feels more intimate). I like being tucked away in a little corner of the Interverse. If someone is here it's either because they randomly landed, or they are genuinely curious & want to know more about me. Might be like stumbling into a ramshackle used book shop - or antiques store (I am an old lady, after all, ha!)

Anyway.

I wanted to share some recent bests. The books I recommend to everyone. And the daily meditation that has had a profound impact on my health, focus and happiness!

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The Argonauts
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Maggie Nelson's books are all amazing, and her latest, The Argonauts, is no exception. I read it in a sitting, and then read it again the next day. It's gorgeous and has lingered with me ever since.

'Maggie Nelson is one of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation. 

The Argonauts is, likewise, resistant to summary, though describing it as a love story might come closest. It is, after all, about love and its fruits: both the falling in love and the maintaining of affection, devotion, tenderness. It is about love and marriage, motherhood, pregnancy, birth and family-making, and because it is a book by Maggie Nelson, it turns every one of these concepts on its head.'


--The Guardian


Also great reviews in the LRB and New Yorker

The Lesser Bohemians

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Oh how I loved this book! McBride's first novel, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing was widely acclaimed, but this is the novel that grabbed me - it was like a fever, just all-consuming.

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The Lesser Bohemians is a love story narrated through the mind of an 18-year-old girl from Dublin who comes to London to take up a place at drama school, and falls wildly in love with an established actor more than twice her age.'

-- LRB


'The Lesser Bohemians confirms McBride’s status as one of our major novelists. She writes with beauty, wisdom and humour and she is uniquely sensitive to what is being communicated with every look or jerk of the body. If, in DH Lawrence’s formulation, the novel is “the one bright book of life”, then the life here radiates through the pages and illuminates ours.'

--The Guardian


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What's to love about London...

5/17/2017

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The Land at Soho Theatre, 24th November 8pm

10/24/2014

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The Land at the Omnibus Clapham

5/3/2014

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The Land: A rehearsed reading of a new play by Nina-Marie Gardner
 Read/Write/Perform

Set on a small farm in suburban America, THE LAND explores what happens when life takes an unexpected turn, robbing us of what we take for granted and throwing into stark relief the things that really matter. For Jack, paralysed after a freak accident and now trapped in bed in a ramshackle barn surrounded by the comings and goings of his carer Lou, his old friend Amelia and his daughter Cassie, life has become a series of mental games he must win to stay connected and alive.

Doors / Bar open from 2pm

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The Arcola Theatre's PlayWROUGHT Festival

1/12/2014

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This is very exciting! My stage adaptation of Sherry & Narcotics has been selected for the PlayWROUGHT Festival at the Arcola Theatre in London, directed by Jerwood Award winner Yael Shavit and starring the amazing amazing actors Lucy Ellinson and Michael Colgan. 
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EcoCentrix at the Bargehouse, London

11/25/2013

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Photos by Rita Leistner
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Wandered through a powerful exhibition at the Bargehouse at Oxo Tower Wharf on the Southbank earlier this month. EcoCentrix: Indigenous Arts, Sustainable Acts included the work of more than 40 artists from the Americas, Australia, the Pacific and South Africa. Installed over four floors of the incredible space – which felt a lot like a loft complex one might find in DUMBO, Brooklyn - the exhibit housed a truly breathtaking range of photographs, digital media, sounds, texts and crafted objects. Much of it was interactive, and included an array of live performances and workshops that I was disappointed to have missed (I stumbled upon EcoCentrix on its last day).

What has haunted me since was a devastating installation on the top floor: The REDress Project, created by Winnipeg-based Métis artist Jaime Black. Red dresses were suspended throughout the dark, cavernous space – the effect was chilling and rather terrifying – the room felt filled with ghosts. Black conceived the piece in honour of the more than six hundred Aboriginal women reported missing or murdered in Canada. As much as I was spooked and uncomfortable in the space, the tragedy of these women was overwhelming such that I also wanted to stay with them a bit. 


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Less disturbing but equally resonant exhibits included Irma Poma Canchumani’s astonishing gourds, upon which she carves the storyboards for the films she then goes on to produce.

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And these gorgeous kites from Guatemala - gigantic bamboo and paper creations made to be flown on the Days of the Dead, in which ancestors are allowed to revisit the world of the living.

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I also loved this room, which gives a good sense of how perfect the Bargehouse was as a setting for EcoCentrix; in it are photos and costumes of the Masi Maidens – Rosanna Raymond and Katrina Igglesden – whose performance I wish I had seen.

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Baronci One Artist's Residency, Genga Italy

12/1/2011

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The view from where I write:
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Morning walk (not long after this photo was taken, the dogs caught a rabbit and I had to stand helpless listening to it scream as they tore it to bits & then ate it. Welcome to the Wild Wild West...
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oh happy day

6/23/2011

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barnes & noble union square, baby!
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mesrine I & II: the antidote to poverty pangs

6/5/2011

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took hill's advice- nothing beats a good bankrobber flick when you're feeling broke- (a double-header of vincent cassel doesn't hurt either...)
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lulu, east 9th street nyc

6/4/2011

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