Nine Arches Press
Adventures in poetry
The Attitudes
Katie Griffiths
Price £9.99
ISBN: 978-1-913437-11-4
eISBN: 978-1-913437-12-1
Date: 15th April 2021
Format: Paperback
Extent: 72 pp
POETRY
Cover artwork by Anna Steinberg
Katie Griffiths’ debut poetry collection, The Attitudes, is a search for trust and faith – in the body, in the mind, in all those things we seek to hold on to but cannot. Here, we intimately encounter mortality and tread the balance between visceral wisdom and the intellect, between fragile, fallible bodies, and the mind’s hold over them, between the bright spaces and the haunted ones.
In poems that are bold, effervescent, frequently playful, Griffiths approaches serious subjects - eating disorders, ageing, grieving - with a precise and inventive lyricism. The Attitudes compiles multitudes, with layer upon layer of counterpoints, juxtaposing and exploring the unresolvable, all the while seeking to move towards a place of deeper reflection and stillness away from the noise and distraction of the daily business of being alive. An astute and accomplished book which transforms.
Praise for The Attitudes:
"All precision-tooled images, sleek lines, and fleets of fancies, fond and less so, Katie Griffiths’s The Attitudes is a book to cherish. From top to toe, it has sword-tip-sharp insight, muscular grace, and an invigorating sense of wonder, underpinned by an effortless musicality. These poems strike a pose, daring you not to fall in love with them." - Rishi Dastidar
"Katie Griffiths brings a mercurial inventiveness to the serious concerns at her poetry's core - belief, selfhood and the soul. Applying pressure to language, tilting it, these poems frequently astonish. They empower us and invite us to live more enquiringly." - Moniza Alvi
"The magic of Katie Griffiths' poetry is its astonishing innovativeness alongside an ancient and elemental ‘bassline’. The resulting music, with hints of the Bible and old adages, is surprising, exuberant, original – each line quivering with intensity. Tonally, too, she finds her own way, mixing irony, solemnity, apology and vivacity. Griffiths, who writes about femininity and embodiment with incredible wisdom and skill, ceaselessly interrogates form and function – of the body, of the lyric speaker, and of the poem." - Kathryn Maris
Katie Griffiths grew up in Ottawa, Canada, in a family originally from Northern Ireland. In 2019 she was awarded second prize in the National Poetry Competition with ‘Do not indulge indigo’ and had the pleasure of reading her own Spanish translation of the poem at the Cosmopoética festival in Cordoba, Spain. Her pamphlet My Shrink is Pregnant (illustrated by Anna Steinberg) was a winner in the Live Canon pamphlet competition. In 2016 she was published in Primers Volume One by Nine Arches Press. A member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen and Red Door Poets, Katie is also singer-songwriter in the band A Woman in Goggles.
The Nine Arches Press blog features poems from many of our poets, as well as interviews and articles.
