Feral

Feral is a storehouse of manifold enchantments: a book in which lore and personal iconography are melded to startling effect. The technical assurance displayed here alongside a strong beating heart make for a sonically and emotionally rich reading, and re-reading, experience. This collection is "a feat of balance", as the poem "Iron Horse" has it, where each component gives shape and function to the elegant motion of the whole. -- Kayo Chingonyi Intricate, vital-tender, dazzling work - Potts' poetry sings even as it bares its teeth. -- Eley Williams * on Feral * These are poems of a marvellously observed, bodily interiority which engage with our animal selves, at a loss in the concrete warrens of our cities, as they starve or gorge, roam or home. The resulting book is deeply personal, compelling, occasionally hilarious and frequently unsettling as the "strange fish" of our thoughts emerge from their "iron guardedness" and hitch themselves to the amazing railings of these poems. And the radio poem The Blown Definitions is a wonder, a whole island mythos to itself. Kate Potts is one of the foremost writers of our generation. Buy this monstrously brilliant book. -- Fiona Benson * on Feral *

Kate Potts is a London-based poet, academic and editor. She is a visiting lecturer at Middlesex University and Royal Holloway, and a tutor at The Poetry School. She completed a practice-based PhD on the poetic radio play in 2017. Her pamphlet Whichever Music (tall-lighthouse) was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice in 2008 and was shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award. Her first full-length collection, Pure Hustle, was published by Bloodaxe in 2011. Her second collection, Feral (Bloodaxe Books, 2018), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Kate is co-director of Somewhere in Particular, a site-specific poetry organisation which aims to connect poetry performance to specific places and communities and to reach beyond conventional audiences.