Catherine Smith

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Writing about your "first time" is one thing, writing about a David Cassidy poster is quite another. And as far as mine or anyone's knowledge is concerned, there is only one woman in this country capable of combining those two components and come out not only alive and kicking, but also carrying a success story.

That woman is Catherine Smith, not only did she manage the above, pouring all the vulgar details of her lost virginity into a poetic work of art, oh no, that's only the beginning. As she puts it herself:
"Life is bleak, but you know the world is bleak, there's wars, global warming, either we sink into despair or we find a way of dealing with it, dispatch it."

And after listening to her poetry for half an hour, there are at least two conclusions to be drawn. One is that Mrs. Smith had her fair share of life's bleakness, and the other is that she has found a very creative way of dispatching it indeed.
The poems she shared with us had, without exceptions, a clearly definable, gloomy, if not sinister sound about them. Her poetry is of the sort that will make you realize which side you're on, either you love her work or you hate it.

Meet Catherine Smith, the woman behind the bundle "butchers hand" for which The Times gave her the following credit: "Her scary unsettling voice seems unexpected in poetry. It cuts her free of the crowd"- Strikingly, scary and unsettling is exactly how she first appeared to me in person. Sitting opposite to me at the dinner table I suddenly realized she wouldn't have been out of place in the opening scene of Polanski's version of Macbeth. Even though she really was a very nice woman, she was just a bit odd. Although actually.. if being odd would be like food, she'd probably be the red lobster with caviar. The cream topping of the exquisite dish of weirdness.

A little prying in her background makes it easier to understand how she came to write this sort of poetry. Her talent was already surfacing at a baffling young age, when she was seven years old she had her first poem published in "The Teacher", after this she was highly recommended for the "Daily Mirror Children's Literary Awards" several times. Which she admits to have been a huge eye-opener, one in her own style. Like she puts it: "I thought you had to be dead to be a poet, that it was something of a first requirement"
Although she now knew that being dead was not required to make poems, she didn't touch it after grammar school, and directed all her attention towards short story writing. Until she rashly signed up for a course and it turned out you had to pick two subjects, her one and only comment was "oh bugger, I can't do that!"

So it was back to poetry, on which she "gorged and feasted" reading a minimum of six related books a week. She found her own voice in this, writing about all the disturbing and unsettling events taking place in her private life. And this brought her where she is right now, a recognized poet and short story writer, editor of the magazine "New Writing", mother of two, and recently elected as one of the twenty most important poets of the new generation.

In my native country of the Netherlands there is an old saying about art, it reads: "art is the most individual expression of the most individual emotion" if this were to be the one and only criterion, Catherine Smith would probably proudly pose next to Van Gogh and Vermeer. But as with every individual experience, this is no guarantee for appreciation. As said before, you either love her work or you hate it.

The latter of which was the case for some 5 people who gathered around the kitchen table as soon as the official part was over. One of us went as far as to admit that she actually felt contempt when Catharine started reading from her bundle. Fortunately for Cath enjoying poetry is an individual experience, different for all of us. In my case I was glad that she explained her poetry in person, which to me made it much more accessible. Readers who will have to do without this oral Catharine-Smith-for-dummies will have to like a challenge and be in need of a strong stomach. But if these requirements are met Catharine's sinister world will be laid wide open to you.

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