Typhoon Etiquette

By Katrina Naomi

Verve Poetry Press are thrilled that the wonderful Katrina Naomi has asked us to publish the poems that came out of her recent Arts Council supported writing trip to Japan. And a wonderful group of poems they are, that at once depict Japan, its traditions, its customs with great enthusiasm but also a healthy dose of heart-on-sleave puzzlement. Katrina doesn’t pretend she is an expert. She is very much an English poet abroad.

Also included are Katrina’s translations of Haiku by two Japanese masters which have previously been published in MPT magazine. Altogether, this is Katrina trying something new, but with the quality, the wonderful way with words, the earnest grappling with the perceived world that characterises all her work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Verve Poetry Press
• Release date: Aug 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781912565771

Katrina Naomi

Katrina Naomi was awarded an Authors’ Foundation grant by the Society of Authors in 2018 for work on her third poetry collection, which is due from Seren in 2020. In 2018, she received a BBC commission for National Poetry Day, her poem ‘Countrywoman’ was broadcast on radio and made into a film-poem and broadcast on television. Katrina has just completed a residency at the Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall. She has recently returned from a writing trip to Japan, following a grant from the Arts Council International Artist’s Development Fund. Katrina’s poetry has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 (Front Row and Poetry Please) and appeared in The TLS, The Poetry Review and Modern Poetry in Translation. Her latest collection, The Way the Crocodile Taught Me, Seren (2016), was praised by Vicki Feaver for its ‘cool voice and fierce eye’ and chosen by Foyles Bookshop as one of its #FoylesFive for poetry. In 2017, her poem ‘The Bicycle’ was highly commended in The Forward Prize for Poetry and she was nominated for the 2017 Best of the Net Award.