Can you tell us a little about yourself, where you live, and how you came to be a poet?

Would it be strange to say that I came to poetry by accident? It may be strange but it’s the truth. I never thought I’d be a writer, let alone a poet. I come from a working-class background, brought up on a council estate in Margate, east Kent, I didn’t ever imagine writing, though I always read avidly. But never poetry. I hated poetry at school. I thought it was elitist and to be honest, I couldn’t understand it, none of it seemed to relate to my life at all. I didn’t begin writing until my late 20s – even then this was writing short stories, erm crime stories, rather than poetry. Then I went on a story writing weekend in Cornwall and was asked to write something ‘from the heart’, when I showed the tutor what I’d written, she said it was a poem. I was amazed as I knew nothing about poetry. She suggested I go on an evening course to begin to read poetry and I found I was smitten by all the contemporary poetry we read, and wanted to try to write myself. I was no overnight success but I won a competition after some years of writing poetry and that led to publication. I live in Penzance and love it, I’ve been living in Cornwall for 11 years now and couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

Read Katrina Naomi’s
‘Pissed Off Nature Poem’ and other poems

We really love your work and we’re so proud to be publishing five beautiful poems of yours in Inkfish: ‘Pissed Off Nature Poem’, ‘River Dart Swim’, ‘Of Nightjars’, ‘A Minor Crime on St Agnes’, and ‘Oak Bouquet’. Each of these poems engages with the natural world in such an emotive, thought-provoking way. Could you tell us a bit about the process of writing them?

Ah thank you. I’m glad you find them ‘thought-provoking’, I suppose if a poem doesn’t try to make you feel or to question or to challenge something in you, then the poetry isn’t doing its job. ‘Pissed Off Nature Poem’ and ‘River Dart Swim’ were written at Dartington while I was leading a course there. It’s an inspiring place though perhaps the ‘pissed off’ might not be the inspiration an organisation might wish for. ‘Of Nightjars’ came about via an invitation from Cornwall Wildlife Trust to hear these birds one night not far from my home in west Cornwall. ‘A Minor Crime on St Agnes’ was written on holiday on the Isles of Scilly. I’m a real lover of islands; I was brought up on one, I’ve found that I’m writing a suite of poems in response to islands. The last poem ‘Oak Bouquet’ comes from a collaboration I’m doing with a visual artist, Julia Giles, who lives on the farm in Cornwall where her family have lived for centuries. We walk the land together, Julia picks things up from the hedgerows and creates directly from her finds. I spot things that intrigue me or that come from our conversations. In this poem, I did as Julia does and picked up a small branch that had fallen in a storm, took it home and stared at it until something happened – this poem.

What is your writing routine and what do you draw inspiration from in the day-to-day?

My routine is usually to swim in the sea first thing, then get to my desk and write after that. That’s very much how my latest collection, Battery Rocks (Seren, 2024) was written. These past few months, I’ve had long covid so haven’t been able to swim, so my routine has been interrupted and I’m still finding my way with the illness and how much energy I have. Happily I’m starting to feel much better now, so I hope to get back to swimming every day soon. The only good thing about the illness is that I’ve had a lot of time to write because I haven’t been able to do much else. I draw inspiration from a surprising number of things – from other poets, from the natural world, from art and film, from the physical body, from politics, from other creative people, from conversations and from experiences. I’m also really into collaborations with other poets and with people from other creative backgrounds, I love discussing our processes and approaches, I’m a bit of a nerd like this. But this always gives me a lot of inspiration.

Environment is a major focus in your writing, one which really heightens the experience we have of your poems, and the way you describe things intertwines amazingly with your distinctive voice. How do you choose and leverage your settings so well?

That’s lovely of you to say. I’m really interested in imagery. I think in another life, I’d be a visual artist, so perhaps that’s why I focus so much on the visual in my writing. I’m not particularly aware of this while I’m writing but I’m always pleased when I see an image that’s working or that’s surprising in some way. I’m not sure that I ‘choose’ my settings, I’ll be walking or swimming or engaged in something and I’ll see or experience something and know straightaway that I want to write about it.

What is the process of crafting a poetry collection like?

Putting it all together is like a giant jigsaw. I always want a strong opening poem and a strong closing poem, then to intersperse my strongest poems throughout the collection. I always want to vary the highs and lows in emotion throughout the length of a collection. I also want a collection to appear interesting on the page, so that it is visually exciting – and of course the cover is really important too and I love choosing the cover images. It takes me a long time to get the poems in the right order. I want each poem to speak to the poem either side of it, whether its in accordance or is argumentative with a poem, I really don’t mind but I feel strongly that each poem needs to speak in some way to its neighbour. Often I think that might only be something that I’m aware of, possibly a reader might be unaware of this but it’s important to me. I don’t think anyone just flings their poems up into the air and places them as they land. Someone’s going to write in now and say that they do, ha ha. I’m running a day’s workshop in London for the Poetry School on crafting a collection in the autumn. It’s something I could go on and on about but I’ll stop there.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m preparing for various festivals and events coming up over the summer and autumn, where I’m doing a lot of readings with Battery Rocks, the collection is a ‘meditation on nature, risk, swimming and the sea’. And I’m finalising the manuscript for a new pamphlet called dance as if, which will be out in the autumn with Verve Poetry Press. dance as if came about from a collaboration with a dancer/choreographer, Kyra Norman. Me and Kyra have danced together, alongside discussing the similarities and differences between poetry and dance over a couple of years. Finding contemporary dance has really helped me get out of my head and into my body. dance as if, is the result. I hope people will enjoy it, even if they know nothing about dance. I always remind myself that I knew nothing about poetry until I was in my late twenties. Who knows what can bite any of us?