Katrina is an award-winning poet and performer, as well as poetry mentor and judge. Battery Rocks, her fourth full collection, will be published in July 2024 (Seren). 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 won the Keats-Shelley Prize 2021 for her poem, ‘in the kelp forest’. ‘in the kelp forest’ features in Katrina’s forthcoming 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 work has been shortlisted for the Alpine Writing Fellowship Prize, London New Poetry Award and the Bridport Prize.

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; Gladfest; Bodmin Moor Poetry Festival; Ways with Words; Kendal Poetry Festival; Hearth.

Katrina has also performed at the Caracol Poetry Festival in Mexico, at the Dublin Book Festival, the Keats-Shelley Museum in Rome and at the YPU University in Japan.

Katrina has also performed at 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’s Poets & Players, and Poetry & the Olympics.

Interviewed & Published

Katrina’s poetry has appeared on Poems on the Underground and BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and Poetry Please, on TV, and in The TLS, The Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry London and Magma. 

Katrina is also a regular panellist and chair for live poetry events, and tutors for the Poetry School, Arvon and Dartington.

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.