Welcome.
|
Katie Metcalfe is an author, poet, blogger and songwriter.
She's 41.9% Scandinavian and most people think she’s a bit too wyrd. For the time being, Katie is based in the North of England, but the Nordic lands hold claim to her heart. She hopes to be living in Norway before next winter sets in so she can write a book about it. The work Katie does is dedicated to the North and winter, wilderness and wyrdness. Currently, she’s working on a new book of poetry and two collections of essays. She’ll reveal more about them when the time is right. (Katie is strange like that. She thinks she’ll hex her work if she speaks about it before it's ready.) Poets Bob Beagrie and Andy Willoughby mentored Katie for several years and said this about her work: “Katie is a prolific writer and editor and her work has ranged from the confessional and therapeutic to acute social observation and formal exploration of what it is to be on the peripheries in terms of gender, style and social communication. She has travelled further North to see if shamanic visions can still be found and brought back as sources of strength in everyday life – her recent work has developed a mythic, sometimes determinedly naïve aspect through ecological and non-logocentric concerns abound as well as a sophisticated search for an authenticity beyond her post-industrial urban landscape that is psychologically challenging as she struggles openly with the dualism of the modern and perceived natural self. The North in her poems is much more than a geographic location.” Katie’s latest book is called My Heart Is A Forest, and is a collection of poems written between 2009 and 2019. The Dark Has Teeth, the second album from her band Cave Mouth (for which she writes lyrics and performs vocals) is due for release on the 31st of March 2021 via Non Posse Mori Records. One of the projects she’s most proud of is Arctic Fever, a spoken word album made in collaboration with Crown of Asteria. Centered around the thawing of the Arctic, Arctic Fever portrays how climate change is impacting the peoples, flora and fauna of the far north. In 2009, Katie founded the press Slice of the Moon Books. In the years the press was active, she launched numerous magazines and published several poetry anthologies including The Mountains You Cannot See: An Anthology of Poetry About Mental Health, Earth, We Are Listening: An Anthology of Eco Poetry and MAIDEN MOTHER CRONE. She blogs at Wyrd Words & Effigies and also writes at The Girl With Cold Hands, a blog that looks at life in the north from every conceivable angle. Katie has been known to take photographs. Debilitated by depression and unable for much of 2019 and 2020, Katie re-discovered her creativity via photography. She embarked on a month-long project in December 2020 called The Darkest Days through which she created photographs, mainly self-portraits, that explored the dark traditions, superstitions, myths and folklore surrounding Yule and Winter. Her photography website can be found here. If you’re interested in digging deeper, Katie has been interviewed at Unquiet Things, Dark Pulse and Vargamor. Katie is always excited to hear from folk (she leads a solitary life) so if you would like to get in touch, you can do so by sending an email to: katiemetcalfewriting@hotmail.com |
"My new favourite book. This book is so finely crafted, beautifully written and painfully sad."
- Amazon Review "All I can say is that I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book!" - Amazon Review 
"This is no book for kids or for those with a nervous disposition, as the author explores topics as dark as a young girl's family falling to the plague, and being buried alive by a bear."
- Life In Norway "The settings are made so visible in this collection, each poem takes you to the freezing north and leaves you there. Very powerful literary art drawing parallels to our own traits. Unforgettable." - Amazon Review |
