Kate Potts Readings
Kate Potts' third full-length book of poetry, Pretenders, was published by Bloodaxe Books in March 2025. It was launched at Bloodaxe's online reading and discussion event on 25 March (scroll down to watch the video), and was launched in person in Stroud on 12 April 2025.
In Pretenders, Kate Potts asks: what is it like, as a daily, lived experience, to feel like a fraud or a fake? And what can ‘the imposter phenomenon’ – a sense that our true abilities and achievements, and other core aspects of our identities, are unreal, undeserved or mistakenly bestowed – tell us about who we are and how we relate to one another?
Through lively and vivid poetic monologues drawn from original interview material, and through original poetry, Pretenders considers individual feelings and experiences of fraudulence, pretence and persona in a wider social and historical context. The varied, hesitant, questing voices build to create a bold and innovative chorus. Pretenders shines a light on our value systems and hierarchies, interrogating notions of ‘realness’, self-assurance, and the self.
Kate Potts' Whichever Music was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice in 2008 and shortlisted for a Michael Marks Award. Her first book-length collection, Pure Hustle, was published by Bloodaxe in 2011. Her second collection, Feral, was Tristram Fane Saunders' Poetry Book of the Month in The Telegraph for October 2018, and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2018.
FORTHCOMING READINGS
Wednesday 7 May 2025, Swindon Festival of Literature, 6.30pm
Lower Shaw Farm, West Swindon, SN5 5PJ
GEORGE SZIRTES and KATE POTTS – with their poems and poetry chat.
Presented in association with Poetry Swindon.
King’s Gold Medal for Poetry winner in 2024 and award-winning Bloodaxe poet George Szirtes will read from his collection Fresh Out of the Sky, a book of songs, dreams, laments, narratives, and comedies about major life-changes involving country, identity, and belonging. It is about perpetually standing at the edge of change, anticipating it, reflecting on it and dreaming about it. He may also read from his many other collections and is happy to answer questions.
In Pretenders, her third book of poetry, editor, and teacher Kate Potts asks: what is it like, as a daily, lived experience, to feel like a fraud or a fake? And what can ‘the imposter phenomenon’ tell us about who we are and how we relate to one another?
Tickets: £7-£8.
Booking details here.
Gloucestershire Poetry Society, Wednesday 4 June 2025, 7 pm to 9 pm (online event)
Crafty Crows June 2025 Edition – Featuring Kate Potts
Hosted by Chloë Jacquet
Kate Potts will be reading from her new book Pretenders, which explores imposter feelings and 'imposter syndrome' through interwoven voices drawn from interviews, and through original poetry.
FREE tickets will be available from 30 days before this event.
For booking details for this online event, see here.
PAST EVENTS
JOING ONLINE LAUNCH READING
Tuesday 25 March 2025, 7pm
Online launch reading by Gwyneth Lewis, Kate Potts and Arundhathi Subramaniam
Bloodaxe's online launch event for Gwyneth Lewis, Kate Potts and Arundhathi Subramaniam was livestreamed on 25 March 2025 and is now avilable on YouTube. All three poets were celebrating the publication of their new poetry books by reading live and discussing their work with each other and with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley.
Gwyneth, Kate and Arundhathi joined the event live from Cardiff, Stroud and New York (via India). Their excellent readings were followed by a fascinating discussion around the shared themes in their work.
[28 February 2025]
