Poetry
The manuscript that kept sifting to the top, Sleeping with Rivers by Cath Drake, is simply full of gorgeous poems. Drake has a tendency to a longer line, a discursive manner, a narrative depth.I started to love these poems from the very first line of the first poem, ‘Every morning she wakes up with rivers…’ Drake’s tone is beautifully sensitive to the rhythms of language: knows when to pull back, when to unfurl startling imagery. There are artful poems about a childhood in Australia and poems involving the education of the female protagonist/poet. In one poem, a teacher, a ‘spineless’ Mr Jacob, suffers a fitting destiny and in another long, strange and hilarious poem, a duck haunts the protagonist like a persistent nightmare. There is a quietly devastating wit at work.
– Amy Wack, Poetry Editor of Seren books and judge of the Mslexia pamphlet prize.
Cath Drake
Cath Drake lives in London and has been published in anthologies and literary magazines in the UK, Australia and US. Her pamphlet Sleeping with Rivers won the Mslexia/PBS Women’s Poetry Pamphlet Competition in 2013 and was a Poetry Book Society Choice. She has been short-listed for the Manchester Poetry Prize and was second in the 2017 Resurgence Poetry School Eco-poetry Prize (now called Ginkgo) and highly commended in the same prize in 2019. Her work has included campaigning, copywriting and storytelling for good causes, environmental writing and award-winning journalism. The Shaking City is her first full collection. She is also a mindfulness teacher and runs writing workshops.
