Kim Moore – författare

Poetry Extra 'Book of the Month''One of the most poignant meditations on motherhood to be published in recent years' Jade Cuttle, THE OBSERVER'Moore's new collection constructs an ambitious architecture for exploring intergenerational trauma and motherhood' Kit Fan, THE GUARDIANShe's sleeping like a fairy-tale girl, before the storyteaches girls like her a lesson.In The House of Broken Things, motherhood is a spell, a terrible power, an intelligence, and transformative in all its complexity and ambivalence. These poems move like myth, invoking the ghosts of The House of Broken Things, where 'Broken mothers and damaged fathers / slept the sleep of those who do not / have time to think, and fractured children / dreamt the things you might expect / that fractured children dream.'Moore's unflinching collection is an astonishing portrait of a mother. Her body as tender, contested territory. Her instincts fierce. Her mind alive with memories of her own childhood, marvelled by love for her young daughter, sharpened with foreboding for her safety in a broken world that has so often made to break her, too. There are truths our daughters must know, and there are burdens we must never pass on. To make them strong, must we also teach them to be afraid?Calling the spirits of Anne Sexton, Emily Brontë, Adrienne Rich and others, she conjures an intimate atmosphere of haunted domesticity, the poems questioning and incantatory as a lullaby whispered to a cradled baby. Throughout, fears, griefs and anxieties are paired with moments of great tenderness, wit and revelation: brokenness can feel like a trap, but these poems always offer a way out.The House of Broken Things is a thrilling new work from one of our boldest and most exciting poets.

'One of the most poignant meditations on motherhood to be published in recent years' Jade Cuttle, The Observer'Moore's new collection constructs an ambitious architecture for exploring intergenerational trauma and motherhood' Kit Fan, The Guardian 'Best recent poetry'She's sleeping like a fairy tale girl, before the storyteaches girls like her a lesson.In The House of Broken Things, Kim Moore interrogates motherhood as a transformative experience in all its complexity and ambivalence.These poems are a nuanced and sometimes painfully honest portrait of life as a new mother. Her hopes for her daughter, the many terrors of mothering her into a world so fraught with violence towards women and girls. Fears and anxieties are paired seamlessly with moments of great tenderness, wit and revelation. Moore conjours a haunting atmosphere of bodies and boundaries, rhythms and movements, inheritance and loss, domesticity and defiance: this is a house of broken things but these poems always offer a way out. The House of Broken Things is a thrilling new work from one of our boldest and most exciting poets.

Kim Moore, in her lively debut poetry collection, The Art of Falling, sets out her stall in the opening poems, firmly in the North amongst 'My People': "who swear without knowing they are swearing - scaffolders and plasterers and shoemakers and carers - ". 'A Pslam for the Scaffolders' is a hymn for her father's profession. The title poem riffs on the many sorts of falling "so close to failing or to falter or to fill". The poet's voice is direct, rhythmic, compelling. These are poems that confront the reader, steeped in realism, they are not designed to soothe or beguile. They are not designed with careful overlays of irony and although frequently clever, they are not pretentious but vigorously alive and often quite funny. In the first section there is: a visit to a Hartley street spiritualist, a train trip from Barrow to Sheffield, a Tuesday at Wetherspoons. The author's experience as a peripatetic brass teacher sparks several poems. The lives of others also feature throughout, including a quietly devastating central sequence, 'How I abandoned My Body To His Keeping': is the story of a woman embroiled in a relationship marked by coercion and violence. These are close-to-the-bone pieces, harrowing and exact. The final section includes beautifully imagined character portraits of John Lennon and Wallace Hartley (the violinist on the Titanic), as well as Jazz trumpeter Chet Baker and the poet Shelley and other poems on: suffragettes, a tattoo inspired by Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and a poetic letter addressed to a 'Dear Mr Gove'.

All The Men I Never Married is a collection of avowedly feminist intent, rich in ambiguity and with an understanding of the layers of complexity and complicity that exist between men and women.Roughly chronological, with early poems about the innocent friendships of childhood that have a dreamy, anticipatory quality which foreshadows a later eroticism, but also hint at fear, with the awkward boy with ‘unwashed clothes’: ‘We hated the way you followed us around…’. Following on are the terrifying episodes of violence or near violence – incidents detailing escaping rape at a party, a friend suffering the consequences of defending herself from unwanted attention in a nightclub, and ‘that being in public is a dangerous thing’.A near-innocuous episode on a fairground log flume sparks a narrative about power and consent, responsibility and opportunity: ‘to realise that someone can touch you/without asking, without speaking, without knowing your name … You remember this lesson your whole life…’. There are incursions and interruptions of having to endure ‘mansplaining’ with an exploration of the complexities and complicity and the risk of confrontation. A number of poems re-enact the ‘easy misogyny’ of everyday life and observe it from an appalled distance.

This collection of lyric essays by Forward prize-winning poet Kim Moore looks at the relationship between poetry and everyday sexism. Moore examines the dynamics of performing poetry as a female poet – drawing on her PhD research and experiences of writing and performing the poems in her second collection All The Men I Never Married which won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2022.Essays tackle subjects that range from heckling at poetry readings, problems with the male gaze and explorations of what the female gaze might look like in poetry and discussions about complicity, guilt and objectification, the slipperiness of the word sexism and whether poetry can be part of transformational change. Moore says, “I believe the time is right for a book like this to make an impact. As a female poet, I know there is a need for such a book to examine the intersection between writing, performing, feminism and sexism. I’ve had many conversations with other female poets who have confirmed my thinking – that female poets are navigating these things regularly, and yet nobody is really writing or talking about them.” At the end of each chapter, readers are encouraged to choose which section they read next, and to make their own connections between the essays. They will also find links between the topics and poems in All The Men I Never Married.

In 2018, the Poetry School and Nine Arches Press launched their nationwide Primers scheme for a fourth time, in search of exciting new voices in poetry, with Kim Moore and Jane Commane as selecting editors. After reading through hundreds of anonymous entries, and narrowing down the choices from longlist to shortlist, three poets emerged as clear choices: Lewis Buxton, Amelia Loulli and Victoria Richards. Primers: Volume Four now collects together a showcase from each of the three new poets It is an irresistible invitation to step out of ourselves and our bodies and drop your expectations on the dancefloor, to take the plunge on the rollercoaster-ride of grief, motherhood and new life, and to meet desire in all its outrageous, dazzling and joyous forms. Secrets, disclosures, changed names and brilliant disguises make for a vivid, adventurous and often deeply moving selection of new work from some of poetry’s most talented emerging voices.Praise for Primers: Volume Four“All three poets are rooted in the territory of the body and the expectations placed on it by society though their concerns range widely – from an examination of toxic masculinity to female desire and motherhood. Their approach to language and form is varied, but what is consistent is their ability as poets to invite the reader to see the world in a different way.” – Kim Moore