It’s wonderful to be able to welcome the amazing Katrina Naomi to our poetry family! Her reading at the first every Verve Festival was incredible and we have been in touch ever since! We knew something amazing would come out of her Arts Council funded trip to discover the poetry of Japan, but never thought we would be publishing the resulting pamphlet! Needless to say, it is more than equal to the high standards she has set in her previous work (incl our favourite, The Way the Crocodile Taught Me).
Katrina Naomi is a powerful poet based in Penzance with two collections and three other pamphlets to her name. In 2018 she received a BBC commission for National Poetry Day. Her poetry has appeared in The TLS, Poetry London, The Poetry Review and The Forward Book of Poetry 2017, as well as on BBC TV’s Spotlight and Radio 4’s Front Row and Poetry Please. Her latest collection, The Way the Crocodile Taught Me (Seren, 2016) was chosen by Foyles’ Bookshop as one of its #FoylesFive for poetry. Katrina was the first writer-in-residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in W Yorks. She has a PhD in creative writing (Goldsmiths) and tutors for Arvon, Ty Newydd and the Poetry Society.
In 2018 she spent six weeks in Japan – funded by the Arts Council and the British Council – walking in the footsteps of haiku master Bashõ and immersing herself in Japanese poetry. The result is a beautiful chapbook titled Typhoon Etiquette.
The poems inside at once depict Japan, its traditions, its customs with great enthusiasm and some puzzlement. Katrina doesn’t pretend she is an expert but prods and questions not only what she finds but also herself.
Also included are Katrina’s translations of Haiku by two Japanese masters, which have previously been published in Modern Poetry in Translation magazine. Altogether, this is Katrina trying something new, but with the quality, the wonderful way with words that characterises all her work.
This item is also available as an EPUB download. To order this, please go HERE
Sample Poem: In a Plum Grove
The plums are from all over Japan
I won’t eat them
but admire their shapely leaves
which are clinging on
in this typhoon
I also admire a stream surging through
Kenrokuen Garden
emboldened
Umbrellas hurry past
the typhoon hasn’t truly hit yet
this is only a taste
By tomorrow there’ll be more
umbrellas on the ground
than plums
Get in touch:
www.katrinanaomi.co.uk
Twitter: @KatrinaNaomi
