“This, you must know, is the growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.” - Charles Dickens, Bleak House

So you’ve been working your way up the greasy pole of qualifications to get to university, having left mainstream school at 13; you’ve met some inspirational teachers who recognise a deep and genuine interest in literature (you had read all of Larkin including the letters by the age of 14) and you get into Hull. You’ve been writing songs and play in a band, even getting on 6 Music, and having moved across the Pennines for an MA in creative writing at the University of Manchester you’re advised there are other poetic role models than Ted Hughes and Don Paterson, so you get into Adrienne Rich and Elizabeth Bishop.

Meanwhile you’ve had work published in the TLS, Poetry Review and the Guardian and nagged Michael Schmidt, editor of PN Review, for feedback on the poems which are to become your first collection, Growlery. Carcanet publish it in 2020. It is shortlisted in the 2021 Queens Belfast Seamus Heaney first collection prize.  

Katherine Horrex is telling me her story, peppered with inspirational tutors, mentors and poets I’m unfamiliar with; it's not surprising given her learning path that she is a committed literacy support worker, with experience in schools, colleges and pupil referral units across Manchester.

Having created a collection for one of the best-known UK poetry publishers, it had a subdued launch in lockdown via Zoom. We know nothing has been quite the same since but now we’re on the other side and Katherine Horrex is back and from my point of view she’s chosen to come back in the right place, Bolton, home of the original Write Out Loud. She’s working on a second collection. She’s interested in working class roots, has researched the Peterloo Massacre and is intrigued by the history of Mass Observation and Bolton Socialist Club. It’s a happy coincidence but I’m sure it will pay dividends.

On Sunday 4 May Katherine Horrex will be Write Out Loud Bolton’s guest reader. Her collection Growlery (Carcanet 2020) “dwells on a world of civic tensions, in the twilit zone between city and country, the human and the natural ... it unpicks the illusion that order upholds society and reveals the true ramshackle complexion of things.”