News/ Readings/ Reviews

 


I'm working on the final edits on my new book, Pretenders. The work focuses on imposters, imposter feelings and imposter syndrome, using interviews as source material to include a range of voices. Go to https://www.katepotts.net/pretenders/ for more information. Pretenders will be published by Bloodaxe Books in March 2025. 

 

 

 

I'm looking forward to getting back into the 3D classroom for an in-person course for Dialect writing platform. Wise Women Poetry Workshop is a 10-week course focusing on and drawing inspiration from a range of work by contemporary women poets. Starting September 18th at the Centre for Science and Arts, Lansdown, Stroud. Find out more and book

 

I have a new substack newsletter, Speak Up! On writing, failing better, and taking up space. As well as tackling topics like finding time to write, visibility as a writer, and writing and parenthood, I'll also be sharing inspiring prompts, and recommendations for competitions, submissions, courses and other opportunities. Read and subscribe here

 

I'm teaching a new online masterclass, Rules in the Poetry Game, on Thursday 25 July. We'll explore how using constraints can help us to let go of conscious choice, embrace randomness, and find a new sense of imaginative freedom in our poetry. Rules in the Poetry Game is hosted by the brilliant Cath Drake's The Verandah.

I'm mentoring for the brilliant LiteratureWorks Word Space talent development scheme this year, working with fantastic Stroud poet Jason Conway. 


I'm really pleased to be working as a mentor for Dialect's GROW Mentoring scheme. Find out more and apply

 

I'm returning to my love of dictionary definitions for an Arvon Masterclass (online) on poetry and dictionaries. April 9th at 7pm.

 

I'll be reading with Mark Bardsley and Philip Rush at Stroud's Museum in the Park on Thursday 30 November, as part of a reading series organised by Yew Tree Press. Poems from Feral plus some new work. 7.30pm.

I'm teaching an online masterclass on Anne Carson's poetry on Thursday 1st February 2024. Poetry at the Edge: Inspirations from Anne Carson is an international online session as part of Cath Drake's The Verandah series. This workshop is now full - waiting list available. 

I'm happy to be returning to the 3-dimensional, face-to-face classroom to teach some sessions for Stroud Poetry Course 2024, a five-month in-person course taught by Philip Rush, Jonathan Davidson and I. First session Saturday 3 February 2024. This course is now full. 

 

I'm returning to The Poetry School for spring 2024 to teach my online (international) course Imposters! Poetry of Pretence, Personae and Imposter Syndrome. Starts Thursday 18 January 2024. This course is now sold out. 

I'm reading at Gloucester Poetry Festival with four fantastic Gloucestershire poets: Alun Hughes, Ronnie McGrath, JLM Morton and Martha Sprackland. 12.30pm at the Folk of Gloucester on Saturday 14 October 2023. 

 

'The Real Bird' is a poem of the week in The Telegraph. November 2022.

'Past Tense', originally published in The Poetry Review, is now part of
Poetry by Heart's 14+ anthology.


I'm teaching a new online course for The Poetry School this autumn: Imposters! Poetry of Personae, Pretence and Imposter Syndrome. Starts Monday 26th September 2022.

 

I'll be reading some poems at the Solva Edge Festival on Saturday 30th July 2022. Brilliant fellow Bloodaxe poet Abigail Parry is also reading, plus Euron Griffith, Deb Winter and Daniel Butler. 

 

I wrote a piece about my time facilitating reminiscence sessions for older people with memory issues for a beautifully designed anthology, Left Cultures.  

 

My poem 'Past Tense' is in the latest issue of The Poetry ReviewWinter 2020.


I'm teaching an online (international) course on multi-vocal poetry for the Poetry School starting Thursday 21 January 2021: Different Voices: Poetry as Dialogue & Assembly.


My poem 'A Telephone Conversation with my Sister/ Footnotes' is shortlisted for this year's The Moth poetry prize, judged by Claudia Rankine. Spring 2020.

I'm teaching an online masterclass course for the Poetry School, starting Thursday 7 May 2020: Tell Me True: Poetry of Testimony, Memory and the Archive.  


'Dictionary Definition form in Contemporary American Poetry'. My essay on dictionary definition form in the work of Mary Kinzie, Robert Pinsky and Solmaz Sharif is published in the wonderful new collection poetry & the dictionary, edited by Andrew Blades and Piers Pennington (Liverpool University Press, 2020).

 

'I am haunted by this history but I also haunt it back': two poetry collections'. My review of Jay Bernard's Surge and David Cain's Truth Street is in Soundings 74. Spring 2020. 

'As if by Magic'. My new short story is published in Knock Three Times, an anthology of new fairy tales (Real Press). Autumn 2019.


'My Words are Buried Deep'. A review of collections by Jane Yeh, Julia Copus and J.O.Morgan in Poetry London Issue 94, Autumn 2019.

 

Feral reviewed by Suzannah V. Evans in The Times Literary Supplement: 'The vivid, intricate poems in Kate Potts's Feral thrill with appetite.' September 2019. 


Feral reviewed by Jonathan Edwards in Poetry Wales 55.1: 'All in all, these poems are a towering linguistic achievement. To read Feral for a while is to find it bamboozling and beautiful, to want to read it for longer. Once that's done, the only response is to consider it a masterpiece, and to feel that everyone who cares about language should read it.' Summer 2019. 

Koestler Voices: New Poetry from Prisons Vol. 2, the prison poetry anthology I edited for Koestler Arts, is now available to buy. With a foreword by George The Poet. 

Feral reviewed by Dzifa Benson in Poetry London Issue 93: 'The poetry performs acrobatic feats, morphing and transmogrifying between the animate and inanimate, slipping and sliding between the intellect and emotion, teetering and tumbling between civilisation and something altogether more atavistic.'

 

The Two of Us: Interview with Naomi Woddis on Reel Rebels Radio. July 2019. 

 

I'm doing a reading and taking part in the 'Female Futures' panel discussion at Surrey New Writers Festival, University of Surrey. Saturday 8 June 2019. 


Feral reviewed by Rishi Dastidar in Magma 73: 'Here's a lovely paradox to ponder: for a book that is called Feral, the wildness inherent within it is tremendously well channelled and controlled.'

 

Reading at Brixton Book Jam. Monday 4 March 2019, 7.30pm.


Reading at the Torriano Meeting House with Alison Winch and Cath Drake. Sunday 17 February 2019, 7.30pm.

'Wolf' in Amy Key's
Poets in Bed podcast (Episode 4). 

'Break Up Variations: An Annotated Score' (Generative Constraints) is now published in Performance Philosophy Vol 4, No 2.

Feral reviewed by Mary Jean Chan in Mslexia: 'Kate Potts' Feral is a fascinating collection that seeks to unsettle the ordinary.' Issue 80, Dec/Jan/Feb 2018/19. 

 

Feral is a Poetry School Book of the year: 'Potts has a skill for turning the everyday and familiar into something unique and freshly coined. 'Still yourself; hold your breath' and revel in it.' 19 December 2018. 

 

Feral is recommended by Kate Wakeling in the Morning Star's 'Poetry of the year': 'Kate Potts's Feral (Bloodaxe) is a revelation of beauty, precision and force'. 29 November 2018. 


Paper/reading (online): 'Feral: Dispatches from the Borderlands' as part of Feral: a nearly carbon-neutral conference, co-hosted by Massey University Political Ecology Research Centre (PERC) and Wageningan University Centre for Space, Place and Society (CSPS), New Zealand.
26 November. 2 December 2018.

Poetry Time Machine interactive poetry workshop and readings at The Royal Opera House Month of Sundays Festival: ROH Remembers. With Belinda Zhawi, Will Harris and Miriam Nash. Sunday 11 November 2018, 3-4.30pm. 

 

Feral is Telegraph poetry book of the month. October 2018.

Feral reviewed by Garry MacKenzie in the New Welsh Review: 'Resistance to labelling is at the heart of this poetry collection on a superficially topical theme ... but it also moves into a world which feels like a selkie's take on a story by Ovid.' October 2018. 

'Page as Stage: three verse dramas': my review of verse dramas by Owen Sheers, Luke Wright and Amy McCauley in Poetry London Autumn 2018: Issue 91

 

PBS Autumn Showcase: reading at the University of York, with Zaffar Kunial and Kit Fan. Thursday 11 October 2018, 5pm.

 

Feral in Jen Campbell's 'What I've been reading recently' vlog for the Poetry Book Society (at 3.15). 

 

Book launch for Feral at the Star of Kings, York Way. Saturday 29 September 2018. 

I'm reading at The White Review/ Burley Fisher Books Poetry Salon. Friday 4 May 2018, 7pm.  

 

'Animal Song (I)', 'Scanderoon', 'Pistons and Bones' and 'Lullaby Girl' in The White Review 21, Spring 2018.