Catherine Graham – författare

Part of the award-winning Indigo Dreams Pamphlets, Like A Fish Out Of Batter is an original collection of poems that bring the people in L. S. Lowry’s paintings to life. Drawing on Catherine Graham’s experience and pride in her working-class Tyneside roots, meet Maureen and Ray the factory workers she has created and whose story is woven through the poems. Spoken in voices that are sometimes ‘almost shockingly intimate’ and often with a bite of humour. The collection was Poetry Kit’s ‘Book of the Month’. Poet Catherine Smith wrote: “Catherine Graham''s poems are precise, tender and humane, perfectly catching the hues, acoustics, textures and rhythms of her characters'' lives.” Billy Mills at Elliptical Movements said “There are echoes of, among others, that great poet Dylan Thomas.” The poems in this collection will appeal to adult lovers of poetry and art.

In the early 1990s, Caitlin Maharg, grieving the loss of her parents, leaves everything she knows in Canada for Northern Ireland to pursue her love of poetry while living in a cottage by the Irish Sea. Feeling like a child again in a distant land still affected by the Troubles, she is haunted by the secrets her parents deaths unearthed. In her longing for emotional closeness, she befriends Andy Evans, a well-known poet with a roguish charm. Their attraction soon leads to a love affair. Flouting the paisley headscarf of respectability, she plunges into a relationship that gives her an entry to the literary world, but at a price. Filled with insights into grief, longing and creativity, The Most Cunning Heart is a novel about how a quiet heroine learns to navigate deception, love and loss.