Wild Persistence

By Katrina Naomi

Katrina Naomi's poetry collection, Wild Persistence, written after a move from London to Cornwall, considers distance and closeness, and questions how to live. She dissects 'dualism' and arrival, sex and dance, a trip to Japan. There is a strong section of poems about the aftermath of an attempted rape. Her voice is convincing and contemporary.

"A collection of humour and revelry, lit by the repeated flare of violence and warmed by the unapologetic need to live the life of one's choosing.” New Welsh Review

"Always independent, never beholden, inspiringly self-aware." Poetry Wales

"If you haven't been on holiday for a while, (who has?) this collection might just be the vacation you are looking for. Moor and sea, the rough and the smooth of family and a peopled town in all its seasons, it's all here in Naomi's crisp and frank style. Dive in. Enjoy." - London Grip

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Jul 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781781725825

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.

Book preview

London: A Reply

A year on and I can’t hear you.

You have left me, dear London,

like I left you. I could drop this tiff,

walk the seven minutes to your big white bus,

climb aboard. I know you’ve tried,

you’ve sent me images through the ether: Soho

early morning, Hyde Park in the sun,

Charing Cross Road’s bookshops

before the chain of dull cafés,

but in this reaching out, you’ve made yourself

so much quieter, perhaps in the way

two people mirror each other,

adjusting the tilt of their heads,

how they move their arms, take on accents.

Yours is a kind of wooing, dear London,

and while I cried and cried at leaving you,

you’d taken on airs, become grandiose

with the possibilities of capital. And I saw

something new, somewhere I’d visited

long ago on a rainy night, playing pool

in a pub near a seaside bus station.

Had I lost the game that night, perhaps

I’d never have come here –

that’s how decisions are made. I’m sorry,

dear London, it’s over. But you’ll go on

reinventing yourself, building taller,

as if you could see me from one of your towers.

How to Celebrate a Birthday

Turn off your computer, you’re not at work

today. There will be drink and food and friends.

There may or may not be cake. You’ll also want,

as well as presents and good sex, a little time alone.

Not to look back but to think about who you are.

A year is immaterial but it’s what we understand;

a better time than New Year to think of who you are,

what you love and what you might change.

It’s important to feel a little bit special,

even before the cava.And there has to be cava.

You can let go of any worry – like the string of a balloon

that may or may not have a number of years frosted

against the pink. Let it go, let the years go,

let who you’d hoped you’d be by now go. Celebrate

who you are. Put up your cards, display your gifts,

though the vegan fudge needs to sit in the fridge,

it can cosy up to what’s left of the cava. Smile

at whoever you meet. Swim in the sea, with or without

friends, consider how each wave greets you. Dance

to your favourite Sister Sledge, the neighbours

shouldn’t mind too much, for it’s your birthday.

Allow yourself to be treated for lunch, then walk

home across the moor, making time for a snooze

in the sun – inevitable after all the cava. Make love

before you go out tonight – you’ll become

more beautiful, this is what people say. And,

if you can – and you can – dance some more.

Dancing shows us who we really are

and who we might become. Go on, dance.

And look up at the stars on your way

back, look at them for longer than usual.

Find one that might burn for you; name it.

At Noongallas

for Kenza

A brooding sky,

cows stumbling down a hill.

So much life and death on a farm.

And out of this huge dampness, a thin cry

like a mewling kitten or a tropical bird –

part West Cornwall, part West Africa –

something undefinable.

We spoke of you last night

having no name for you then.

As we talked, a meteor shower, an omen

short-lived but powerful. And your father said:

At home, we believe the stars burst

into the atmosphere before falling to the