Katrina is an award-winning poet and performer, as well as poetry mentor and judge. Battery Rocks, (Seren, July 2024), her fourth full collection, has received the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors. Katrina grew up close to the sea in Margate and now lives in Cornwall where she combines her love of writing with sea swimming and a passion for wild places. Before poetry, Katrina worked as an activist and commissioning editor for an international human rights organisation. Katrina has a PhD in creative writing from Goldsmiths and is Chair of the Society of Authors’ Poetry & Spoken Word Group,

Awards

Katrina has received the 2024 Arthur Welton Award for Battery Rocks, which was published in July 2024. Katrina won the Keats-Shelley Prize 2021 for her poem, ‘in the kelp forest’. ‘in the kelp forest’ features in Katrina’s Battery Rocks (Seren, 2024).

Katrina’s most recent collection, Wild Persistence, (Seren, 2020), received an Authors’ Foundation Award from the Society of Authors. Same But Different, a poetic collaboration with Helen Mort (Hazel Press, 2021) won the 2022 Saboteur Award for Best Collaboration. The Way the Crocodile Taught Me (Seren, 2016) was a #FoylesFiveForPoetry and received an Arts Council Award. Katrina’s poetry has been highly commended in the Forward Prize, and shortlisted for the Alpine Writing Fellowship Prize and London New Poetry Award. She is a previous winner of the Templar Poetry Pamphlet Competition.

Live

Katrina has read and performed her poetry throughout the UK, including at: the Ledbury Poetry Festival; Aldeburgh Poetry Festival; Ted Hughes Festival; Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing; StAnza International Poetry Festival; Wenlock Poetry Festival; Cornwall Contemporary Poetry Festival; Verve Poetry Festival; Seren Cardiff Poetry Festival; Gladfest; Bodmin Moor Poetry Festival; Ways with Words; Kendal Poetry Festival and Hearth.

Katrina also performs internationally and has appeared at the Caracol Poetry Festival in Mexico, the Dublin Book Festival, the Keats-Shelley Museum in Rome, YPU University in Japan and at Cork’s OBheal.

Katrina has also performed at Arvon; Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club; Wilton’s Music Hall; The Bush Theatre; London Museum of Docklands; Royal Festival Hall; Oxford University; Goldsmiths College; Cardiff’s Chapter Arts Centre; Manchester Poetry Library; Manchester’s Poets & Players, Moniack Mhor and Poetry & the Olympics.

Interviewed & Published

Katrina’s poetry has appeared on Poems on the Underground and BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, Open Country and Poetry Please, on BBC Radio Cornwall, on TV’s Spotlight and Talking Women, and in The TLS, The Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry London and Magma. Katrina appears on several podcasts.

Katrina has been poet-in-residence for Arnolfini International Centre for the Arts, Bronte Parsonage Museum, Gladstone’s Library and Japan’s YPU university in Kofu.

Katrina is a regular panellist, interviewer and chair for live poetry events, and tutors for Arvon, the Poetry School, the Poetry Society and Dartington. She is currently collaborating with a dancer/choreographer.

Reviews

Battery Rocks has been reviewed in Mslexia, Yorkshire Times, Outdoor Swimmer, La Razon (Mexico) & on social media, and featured as ‘Book of the Month’ by The Edge of the World bookshop. Writing in Mslexia, Ellora Sutton says: ‘By focusing intensely on place, Katrina Naomi is able to push at the horizons of freedom, self and risk’ & finds a balance between ‘dark undercurrents’ and ‘bright, brilliant imagery, often gloriously camp and kitsch’.

Judging

Katrina has judged: the Patricia Eschen Poetry Competition; Teignmouth Open Competition; Poetry Society Stanza Competition; Poetry Society/Artlyst Poetry Competition;  Anne Born Prize;  Ted Hughes Young Poets Competition;  Gladstone’s Library Writer in Residence judge; Rhyme and Reason Slam Judge; StAnza Festival Slam; The Poetry Society’s Members’ Poems.

Katrina is a creative mentor for young writers for Young & Talented Cornwall.