Books Books
Category: Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 72
ISBN: 9781781725757
Publication date: April 14, 2020
Price: £9.99
Category: Ebooks, Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 72
ISBN: 9781781725764
Publication date: April 14, 2020
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
Longlisted for The Laurel Prize 2021
The shaking city of Australian poet Cath Drake’s debut poetry collection is a metaphor for the swiftly changing precarity of modern life within the looming climate and ecological emergency, and the unease of the narrator who is far from home. Tall tales combine with a conversational style, playful humour and a lyrical assurance. The poet is able to work a wide set of diverse spells upon the reader through her adept use of tone, technique, plot and form. She is a welcome new voice for contemporary poetry.
Watch this video of Cath reading her poem ‘How I Hold The World In This Emergency’ below:
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.
“A vibrant, thought provoking collection.”
Sue Wallace-Shaddad, London Grip
‘This joyful, exuberant, wildly imaginative collection exhorts us all to unmoor our minds, to “live among the strange and shining”.’
Kate Potts
‘Cath Drake’s poems deftly explore conflict and the future of our changing, imperilled planet – in a poem about climate emergency, the narrator muses wryly ‘sometimes I hold world in one hand, my life / in the other’. This is a collection alive to dilemmas. Her writing is searching, witty and full of compassion, helping us navigate a shifting world.’
Helen Mort
‘Cath Drake wants to grasp the world whole. When she looks at the past, it’s with a big rambunctious energy that has implications for the present. These are restless and generous poems, full of the vivid reality of people’s lives. Read them as a guide to staying clear-eyed, combative and caring in unsettled times.’
Philip Gross
‘Its unfettered creativity and sharp, critical mind work alongside one another to deliver a poetry collection equal parts fascinating, essential, abstract and educational. The insights it provides into the major struggles of our era and the particularly intimate approach it takes in doing so create a truly worthwhile literary experience.’
New Welsh Review
‘Drake’s work is often playful, almost always highly imaginative (with more than a touch of surrealism) and technically accomplished… [a] welcome intrusions into what might be called the “Sydney/Melbourne/Canberra poetic triangle.’
Geoff Page, The Weekend Australian
