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An uplifting reading across the world!

 Quite a tour-de-force and thoroughly enjoyable with a wide range of voices, countries, and themes. Mind-blowing. Thank you.

It was such an uplifting event on Saturday – on a rainy day – that sense of global connection is just gold dust right now!

I felt honoured to listen and to read. Fabulous group of writers.

A wonderful experience! I loved it.

What a fabulous reading, what an amazing group of writers. What a beautiful and memorable event!

Over 70 people from right across Australia & the UK tuned into ‘A Reading to Buoy Us’. Writers from Australia and the UK (and one late night writer from Auckland, NZ) who have been writing together over the last couple of months shared their poetry and prose about these strange and challenging times. Plus the wonderful Australian poet Mark Tredinnick, our guest reader, gave us an intimate and absorbing performance of some of his latest work, including poems in the Korean Sijo form, and pieces for his partner and daughter who were also listening in. Very moving and inspiring. THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO PERFORMED & CAME ALONG!

Writing & creativity matters. Connections matter. SIGN UP to next term and read with us in August

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Reading to Buoy Us + new writing workshops

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It’s been wonderful and terrifically buoying writing about these challenging times with writers across Australia and UK. Join our celebratory reading on 6th June. Hopefully our creativity will help buoy you too.

We’re thrilled that our guest reader is Mark Tredinnick OAM, one of Australia’s most celebrated poets who has published many books of memoir and poetry, wonderful essays and has a long list of prizes, including the Cardiff and Montreal Poetry Prize. Mark has a strong focus on the natural world and his most recent poetry book is ‘A Gathered Distance’ (Birdfish, 2020).

We’ll read highlights of our poems and stories from across the UK (incl. Liverpool, London, Lincoln, Devon, Worcester, Margate) and Australia (incl. Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Gold Coast), plus also Auckland from:

Kate Potts, Bree Alexander, Rita Tognini, Be Manzini, Cyndie Innes, Babs Knightley, Kathleen Broderick, Jessica Taggart Rose, Nina Lewis, NJ Hynes, Kathy Armstrong, Tineke Van der Eecken, Lesley Sawyer, Edna Heled, Eleanor Yule, Gayelene Carbis, Colin Hopkirk, Janet Chan & Cath Drake

Sign up to the free event HERE

Please arrive on time as we may be close the meeting room a little after the start. It will be about 1.5hrs long.

Saturday 6 June – do check and double check your timezone 11am UK (GMT+1)  /  6pm Perth, Australia /  8pm Australian Eastern Standard time

If you want to sign up to next term which starts in late June CLICK HERE for dates and info, or CONTACT ME. 

SIGN UP TO MY MAILING LIST HERE

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Clerkenwell cabaret live-stream

Award winning poetry, comedy and songwriting from Tyrone Lewis, Cath Drake, Catherine Rudie, Steve Parry and Chris Dowding – all wrapped up in one 90-minute Facebook livestream. Like assembling the avengers for a slanging match against the temptations of silence and solipsism. Or something. Here amongst the Indoor Fireworks.
Wednesday 27 May. Brought to you by Diego Brown and the Good Fairy. 💯♨️♨️♨️

To join in – JOIN THE CLERKENWELL ART’SLAB’S INDOOR FIREWORKS Facebook page 

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XR People Of The River Rise!

I’m reading with a fab group of writers to highlight the impact of climate change on rising waters . XR People Of The River Rise was meant to be held live beside the Thames but it’s now online! Presented by XR Writers Rebel & Culture Declares Emergency, introduced by Toby Litt with readings by novelists James Miller, Monique Roffey, Courtia Newland, Jessica Townsend, Chloe Aridjis, Jeff Goodell, Clare Morrall, Edward Platt.

Zoom, Wed 20th of May, 7.30 pm.  Sign up FREE here:

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A truly global launch of The Shaking City

Thanks so so much to everyone who came to The Shaking City launch!
Over the 2 timezone launch events there were about 130 people from across the globe: Wales, Scotland, England, USA (Texas), Bangkok, Switzerland, Malta, Australia (Melbourne, NSW, Queensland, Canberra and Wheatbelt, Albany, Fitzroy Crossing, Fremantle and Perth in WA), Delft (Netherlands) and probably many more I can’t remember. A few tears were shed. Lots of fun and incredible connections.
THANK YOU FOR MAKING IT SO SPECIAL XXXX
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‘The Shaking City’ is born

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)

Amid all the chaos in the world, my new book is available to order.  I’m planning an online book launch in April. Order it from Seren Books

Come to the online launch on 17th of April 8pm or noon 18th April (both in UK time but open to all across the globe) – rsvp.

Read my blog on the book’s release.

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Amy Wack, poetry editor, Seren Books: Cath Drake’s native Australia features large in her debut collection of poems, The Shaking City. Author of a Mslexia magazine prize-winning pamphlet, Drake fashions adroit narratives, lush landscapes and keenly observed character portraits. The Shaking City itself stands for both the unease of the narrator and the swiftly changing times we live in.

Helen Mort: 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.

Karen McCarthy Woolf: Cath Drake’s lush, lyric poems are full of inquisitive movement that traverses a network of meridians between her native Australia and the UK.  Like midday sun in a desert, their narrative strikes hard in its passionate counterpoint between the absurdities of the human condition and our most urgent environmental concerns.

Kate Potts: In Cath Drake’s The Shaking City, inhabitants and buildings wobble, crack, shudder, unpeel and regrow their own skin. They seek out ways to endure: sturdy-framed lives, bricks strong enough to withstand hurricanes, wolves, and the weight of unspoken trauma. In this world, close and passionate attention is paid to the beauty and strangeness of nature, and of everyday life. The Shaking City’s tall tales explore existence across boundaries, and in between places: the folkloric bunyip appearing in the kitchen, the would-be lovers stuck (perhaps forever) on the circle line, the speaker who catches the hide of the world and fashions it into a handbag. This joyful, exuberant, wildly imaginative collection exhorts us all to unmoor our minds, to ‘live among the strange and shining.

 

 

 

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Waymaking is a winner

Waymaking, an anthology of prose, poetry and art by women inspired by wild places and outdoor adventure, has been selected as the winner of the Mountain Literature (Non-Fiction) The Jon Whyte Award in the international 2019 Banff Mountain Book  Competition in Alberta, Canada.

I have a long poetic sequence that is dispersed throughout the book about walking the Camino de Santiago.

“This superb collection of women’s short stories, poems, and illustrations is full of gems from end to end. Waymaking is an immersion into the tears, giggles, sighs, and love that have gone into producing this precious yet ground-breaking work.” Paul McSorley, 2019 Book Competition Jury

It’s also on the Guardian’s top travel gift books.

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It’s time…. the writers rebel!

Top UK Writers join Rebel Protest against the Ecological and Climate Emergency

40 writers to perform in Trafalgar Square on 11th October, 5pm as part of XR’s October Uprising . I’m proud to be part of a team organising this incredible event.

It features poems and prose, about nature, ecology and the current climate crisis from Ali Smith, Naomi Alderman, Chloe Aridjis , AL Kennedy, Helen Simpson, David Harsent, Daljit Nagra, Paul Farley, Glyn Maxwell, Susie Orbach , Philip Hoare, David Graeber, Owen Sheers, Simon Schama, Deborah Moggach, Leone Ross, Rachel Edwards, Anjali Joseph, Toby Litt, Matt Thorne, Gregory Norminton, Tom Bullough, Naomi Ishiguro , Juliet Jacques, Will Eaves, Natalie Haynes, M John Harrison, Susana Medina, Irenosen Okojie , Romesh Gunesekera, Salena Godden, Chris Beckett, Joanna Pocock, Robert Macfarlane.

This is only the beginning – join our Facebook and Twitter feeds Wr Logo B Square