"Exceptional. Strange Shape balances inventiveness and tension. Her writing becomes a visionary exercise."
Dr Andrew McDonnell, Gatehouse Press Editor
Strange Shape, the debut poetry collection of Cat Woodward, is a love letter to Norwich, haunted by the spectral hellhound Black Shuck across the fens and fields of history, following the rivers towards the waves of the rising tides returning to claim the land. Imaginative, lyrical and full of dark magic, Strange Shape takes an East Anglian city and shifts it into unexpected forms.
I couldn't be more thrilled! My thanks go to the Gatehouse Team and special thanks to Natty, Gatehouse's typesetter, for wrestling with this beast!
Here's a snippet from the book:
The Ghost of Wuffa, King of the Angles
In which Wuffa considers then addresses the land of his kingdom, East Anglia, circa 575.
a hed growing bak its tung
wer hovels slipped into,
as lyke the lowse creeps in
a softened shu,
wher,
huddled agaynst befor-bristle,
huddled agaynst yet-bulk,
both as blank as chalk,
they trubble me still.
a breething beest, I swet me in
who, lyke the Fen, fills a hol to cuvver it
with welling ox-reek, unyons, werked gold.
aghast me not
yu wher, who, tho swollowed
remain un-eeten,
diving in th’erth like a weed.
scorn not my hevvy tred
yu sprowt, yu snayk-in-a-hol,
yu allredy carving arrow,
and stop not, my hart, too offen.
Strange Shape will be launched tonight at The Anteros Arts Foundation in Norwich, as part of a Gatehouse four-poet launch.
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