Wales Arts Review is proud to present the new series, Artists in Residence. Introducing Sophie McKeand… throughout 2017 artists, including Sophie McKeand will take a leading creative role in what Wales Arts Review publishes, centring their skills on a challenging project over the course of a month. We were inundated with applications, receiving hundreds of emails about the positions, and it was no easy task whittling down all that talent to this final eleven. Our team of six editors debated long into the night, and in the end, we decided on a collection of people who we most want to work with, and whose work excites us. We think you will be excited by them too.
Here is a brief outline of what we can expect from this thought-provoking writer and poet.
Sophie McKeand is a writer of water and earth, of migration and roots. These threads of poetry are woven throughout Sophie’s life in celebration of the kaleidoscopic forces that make up the unnameable essence of being.
After selling/donating/gifting 95% of her belongings this year, Sophie now permanently slow-travels across Europe in a self-converted van with her partner and two rescue hounds. This continual pilgrimage to the land invites a more nomadic, minimalist way of being into life and art, encouraging the exploration of issues such as land ownership, borders, nationalism, consumerism, environmentalism, belonging, transience, technology, the language of the land, and the poetic imagination.
The following are the Wales Arts Review pieces that McKeand has contributed throughout his residency with us.
Additional Artists in Residence pieces by the other selected artists are available also.
The Politics of Authenticity | Part One
This Politics of Authenticity (Part One) piece discusses what is the role of a poet in modern society? To speak up or stay silent?
The Politics of Authenticity | Part Two
This Politics of Authenticity (Part Two) piece continues the discussion of what is the role of a poet in modern society? To speak up or stay silent?
The Politics of Authenticity | Part Three
This Politics of Authenticity (Part Three) piece concludes the discussion of what is the role of a poet in modern society? To speak up or stay silent?
Sophie McKeand is one of the artists selected for the 2017 Artist in Residence line-up series. Rebel Sun is a poem by McKeand.
Sophie McKeand is one of the artists selected for the 2017 Artist in Residence line-up series. The Drowning Woman is a poem by McKeand.
Sophie McKeand is one of the artists selected for the 2017 Artist in Residence line-up series. Waiting for Awen is a poem by McKeand.
Sophie McKeand is one of the artists selected for the 2017 Artist in Residence line-up series. #thirtydaysofbrexit is a piece by McKeand.
The Personal is Political | A.i.R
This Personal is Political piece is by Sophie McKeand which explores her own poem Cumulonimbus and is part of an Artists in Residence series.
This piece by Sophie McKeand is about her video Process (in memory) and is part of the new Wales Arts Review series, Artists in Residence.
Dharma by Sophie McKeand is her final poem and contribution to Wales Arts Review’s new 2017 series, Artists in Residency.
In April 2016 Sophie McKeand delivers her Ted Talk titled, Saving Communities via Creativity and Self-Directed Learning.
This video is the perfect accompaniment to the three-part essay Sophie wrote for us in December, The Politics of Authenticity. McKeand’s Politics of Authenticity is available now.
Sophie McKeand contributed a number of pieces to Wales Arts Review as part of the new Artists in Residence line-up series.
