Catherine Smith

Catherine Smith writes poetry, prose and drama.

Catherine’s first pamphlet, The New Bride, was a winner in the 2000 Book & Pamphlet Competition and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her first book, The Butcher’s Hands, was a PBS Recommendation, and won the Aldeburgh/Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection. Her most recent collection, Lip, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her next collection will be Otherwhere, due for publication in October 2012.

Catherine’s poetry has been widely published in magazines and anthologies, and she has won prizes for her short stories.

Catherine writes narratives of alienation, engaging with dream, nightmare and the surreal, peopled by characters at the edge and sometimes beyond the edge. Intense and even at times grotesque (the pages are littered with obsessives, a vampire, the ghost of a jealous wife, ‘Charades’ with an s & m subtext) her poetry is always convincingly well-observed, imaginative and ultimately life-affirming.

Born in 1962 in Windsor, educated at Windsor Girls’ School and the Universities of Bradford and Sussex; Catherine now live in Lewes, East Sussex, married with two adult sons.