MUSIC: Dublin-based Chicago artist is on her way to Indiependence

CULTURE journalist, radio and television broadcaster, spoken word artist, poetry workshop instructor, and event organiser, Clara Rose Thornton originally hails from Chicago and has been based in Dublin for the last few years. 

In Chicago she founded the company InkBlot Complex to incorporate writing, editing, and entertainment services under one umbrella. InkBlot Complex focuses on the arts and their intersection with social justice, identity politics, history, and place.
A lively, erudite broadcaster, in Ireland Clara Rose is a film critic on ‘Arena’, the national RTE radio arts programme has discussed film, race, and feminism on the likes of The Ryan Tubridy Show and The History Show on RTÉ Radio 1.

She also appears regularly as a TV culture journalist on RTÉ 1's Morning Edition. Her cultural criticism has also appeared in the Irish Independent, the Irish Times, District Magazine, Artscope, and the Chicago classic, Stop Smiling.

From 2008 to 2012 she wrote ‘Southerly Exposure’, the weekly fine arts column of the Rutland Herald, Vermont's Pulitzer-Prize-winning daily.

Clara Rose counts Facebook, Harvard, and Ancestry.com among brand journalism clients.
Clara Rose is a multiple poetry slam champion, including the 2014/15/16 Leinster (Dublin) Slam Poetry competition while also taking third place in the 2015 All-Ireland Poetry Slam in Belfast.

Nuyorican Poets Cafe in lower Manhattan honoured her at the onset of 2015 with a half-hour featured artist set. In 2014 she toured Ireland as the headlining performer for the nation's inaugural Black History Month, which she was instrumental in founding.

The year prior, she toured Europe as Vice & Verses, an InkBlot Complex creation and site-specific performance involving her spoken word set to live music, co-composed with native musicians in the countries in which the shows were performed.

She's taught the InkBlot Complex Poetry Workshop in South Korea, Ireland, Canada, and the United States, and judged two Poetry Out Loud competitions in the US.

In Ireland she's been featured at Electric Picnic, Body & Soul, International Literature Festival Dublin, Lingo Festival, Project Arts Centre, Trinity College, and University Colleges Cork and Dublin. A full-time touring performer, her provoc-ative shows may be experienced in countries around the world.

And in Ireland, InkBlot Complex presents Vice & Verses: Neo-Soul Brigade on last Tuesdays bimonthly.
Clara will be performing at this year's Indiependence Festival in Mitchelstown on the Big Little Stage on Sunday August 5. For information and tickets www.indiependencefestival.com.

TRACK RECORD WITH CLARA ROSE THORNTON:

Most memorable moment in Dublin?
I don’t want to start a piece being morose. Though if I was honest, a moment that remains perhaps the most memorable for me happened three days into being here. I witnessed a man overdose on heroin and die, directly in front of me, in a doorway in Temple Bar. He fell into his female friend’s arms and she began screaming in my direction. The incident showed me I had entered a place far different than stereotypical imagery and lore.

Favourite place to visit in Dublin?
The Formal Gardens at IMMA.

When not performing, what else do you do?

Ah, the constant hustle of the artist’s life! I have six jobs, all taking up massive time commitments: culture journalist, radio and TV broadcaster, event organiser, touring performance poet, part-time childminder, occasional bartender.

First album you bought and last album you bought?

First three bought were Notorious BIG’s ‘Ready to Die’, Michael Jack-son’s ‘History’, and The Cranberries’ ‘No Need to Argue’. The last was a disc from 5th Element.