Happy National Poetry Day! Here is an article I’ve written for The Conversation responding to this year’s NPD theme, change.
https://theconversation.com/poetry-has-a-power-to-inspire-change-like-no-other-art-form-99722
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Join us at the Roath Park pub in Cardiff to celebrate the launch of two exciting new books by writers from the city – The Way Out by Kate North and Things that Make the Heart Beat Faster by João Morais. Katherine Stansfield will be our wonderful chair for the poetry session with Kate, while the wonderful Richard Gwyn will chair the short story session with João.
There will be readings and short Q & A sessions. Free Entry. All Welcome. The bar will be open and very affordable and there will be free nibbles on offer and all you vegan, veggie and gluten free folks will be catered for. Failing that, it is on City Road 😉
https://www.facebook.com/events/1949701681787382/
The Way Out offers entertaining, poignant and funny poems. A fresh and contemporary voice addressing the personal, the political, the everyday and the absurd. Kate North’s second collection shows that the only way to harness the future is live one’s choices with assuredness in the present. Sharp observations of addiction, illness and loss rub shoulders with celebrations of the body, exploration of the world and the value of loving relationships.
https://www.parthianbooks.com/collections/pre-order/products/the-way-out
João Morais’s contemporary debut collection of stories beats paths through a capital city from street food markets and art galleries to the park and the pub. From illegal raves to prison visits, Morais turns his unflinching beam on the quickened pulse of urban living: spliffs, fights, and hearts spark as relationships and power struggles are tested. Often comic, sometimes tragic, these stories detail the moments in their characters’ lives when everything changes and their hearts beat faster.
I’m please to say that my second poetry collection, The Way Out, will be published with Parthian later this year.
‘The language is muscular, the voice commanding, while the subject matter considers the cruel joke of mortality through very tangible and physical descriptions. In such a landscape, the body becomes an undiscovered country, relationships are unsteady, and place is viewed as if through a kind of vertigo. Whatever the direction in The Way Out, there is always movement inwards, through, and out in the world.’ – Zoë Brigley
‘The way out of the title isn’t an exit – more like being outbound on a journey. The destination of each poem, whether in another country or at home, in the past or in the body itself, is to be entirely, physically present. As one poem says, “The way out is here.”’ – Philip Gross
‘This inquisitive collection roams into the spaces we can’t reach – the lungs, the liver – and those we think we know: back gardens and parks, the distances between people. The mysteries of the body offer ways into the mysteries of human relationships, and back out again as families mourn and re-make themselves, landscapes invite and consume. A book of transitions, The Way Out is always moving, offering fresh perspectives with wry humour and unsettling angles.’ – Katherine Stansfield
‘a pleasure to hold in mind, sweet and salt with a sharp aftertaste, somewhat disquieting, and more of a pleasure for that.’ – Stephen Payne
Here is a list of recent publications from Kate:
Poetry contribution in Poetry Wales. Vol 53 Number 1 pp 54
Poetry contribution in Poetry Salzburg Review. 31
Short story ‘Houtsiplou’ in: The Lonely Crowd. Issue 6.
Peer reviewed article ‘Exploring Care for Children with Autism in Wales Using Creative Writing as a Research Method in a Collaborative Study’ in: Writing in Practice. Issue 3. http://www.nawe.co.uk/DB/current-wip-edition/articles/exploring-care-for-children-with-autism-in-wales-using-creative-writing-as-a-research-method-in-a-collaborative-pilot-study.html
It’s lovely to have a short story published in Meniscus, the Australasian online literary journal. You can read ‘Pope Penis IX’ here.
Kate’s story ‘The New Tent’ is out here in the Wales Arts Review. It’s the seventh installment in WAR’s Story: Retold series, and is inspired by Margiad Evans’ classic, ‘The Lost Fisherman’.
You can now find details about the Secondary Character launches in Cardiff and Swansea here: launch details
