Kate Davis

Board of Trustees, Vice Chair

I’ve always made things: I first trained in fashion design and the industrial processes used in the clothing industry. More recently I’ve spent time studying and practicing taxidermy.

 

I’m interested in the ways in which words and their sounds work on us in ways outside of their given meaning. For the past twenty years I’ve studied, written and taught poetry. My poems have been published in Iota and Muse, broadcast on BBC radio and printed on shopping bags. My stories have been installed in street furniture, in the primates section of Manchester Museum’s natural history display and at Art Gene. I gained an MA Poetry from MMU in 2011 and in 2013 was awarded a Northern Writers Award.

I was born on the Furness peninsular and still live in Barrow. The geography and geology of this karst landscape, where stone dissolves and hills are pitted with old iron ore mines is central to much of my writing, as is the physical act of walking across it.

Kate is a published poet, her debut collection The Girl Who Forgets How To Walk tells a personal narrative of contracting polio as a young girl, her subsequent disability and slow rehabilitation. A book of things known and not known, of untrustworthy ground and unsteady bodies, The Girl Who Forgets How to Walk finds comfort in the ancient limestone of her home county as she teaches herself to move again along its hills and coastlines. Inspiring, funny and deeply personal, with this book Davis creates her own map to navigate the wild landscape, demonstrating a unique connection to the earth beneath us.