Friday 1st November, 6pm-8pm

The Hypatia Trust, Chapel Street, Penzance

Katrina Naomi is an award-winning poet, performer, poetry judge & mentor. In this intimate reading, Katrina will read from Battery Rocks (Seren, 2024), which recently won the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors. Battery Rocks also contains the poem 'in the kelp forest', which won the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry. Katrina lives in Penzance. Katrina will also take questions on her writing, inspiration & wider publishing issues.

Battery Rocks

“Each poem rolls in and out like the sea and refreshes like a wild swim.” – Roger Robinson

In Battery Rocks, Katrina Naomi returns to the Cornish swimming spot – Battery Rocks in Penzance – every day for a year. On each swim, she finds something fresh and invigorating.

Exploring the sea in all its mercurial forms, Katrina questions the world through the lens of nature and the more than human. Poems like ‘And if there were no sea?’, which recognises both the power and danger of the sea, as well as all that would be lost if it didn’t exist, approach the climate emergency from aslant, offering a new take on one of the most pressing concerns of our times.

Katrina also examines issues of fear, strength and vulnerability, writing in response to an attempted rape and other experienced attacks. She questions how she can feel safer alone, in a raging sea in winter, in nothing but a swimming costume, than on dry land. In poems like ‘The Sea Speaks’ and ‘i.m. Sarah Everard’, the risks of swimming are juxtaposed with the dangers on shore for women.

Battery Rocks revels in friendship, love and community. The Cornish language and landscape are deeply entwined, and Naomi deftly experiments with poems in Kernewek (Cornish) and English. The collection ends in the strange beauty of ‘in the kelp forest’, winner of the prestigious Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry. Finding joy through immersion in nature, Battery Rocks is a thoughtful meditation on nature, risk, swimming and the sea.

Katrina featured on an article by the BBC on Battery Rocks released on 29th August 2024 - you can listen here.