“Leave Your Sleep”: Natalie Merchant interview and performance of a Charles Causley poem

Natalie Merchant talks about her new album Leave Your Sleep, which uses children’s poems and nursery rhymes for lyrics, in an interview with Ellah Allfrey of Granta.

Here’s a live performance of one of the pieces included on the album, from the September 2009 Grand Opening of Poet’s House in New York. This is by British poet Charles Causley: “Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience,” the opening track of the two-disc set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-yc3UN_BZg

Watch more live performances of songs off Leave Your Sleep at BBC Radio Scotland.

One Comment

  1. Reply
    Tina McVeigh 27 April, 2010

    Ok…

    I discovered this song three days ago.

    I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this

    RAW video. It captures Natalie Merchant more
    than any other “music” video.
    Um… this is not simply a “music” video.
    This is Natalie at her absolute BEST!!

    Uncensored and uncommercialized.

    Natalie NEVER went away. She just needed
    time to live her life and nurture her child.
    The irony is, she “thought” she was giving her
    daughter a love of poetry. Yet, at the same time
    Natalie realized her own search for the poetic
    meaning, symbolism and lyrical rhythm of words
    and love.
    Thank you for such a fantastic raw and pure
    sense of Natalie’s talent and beauty she brings
    to this particular poem.
    discovered her own

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