The Art of Falling

Overview

Kim Moore, in her lively debut poetry collection, sets out her stall in the opening poems, firmly in the North amongst 'My People': "who swear without knowing they are swearing… scaffolders and plasterers and shoemakers and carers…". The poet's voice is direct, rhythmic, compelling. The lives of others also feature throughout, including a quietly devastating central sequence, 'How I abandoned My Body To His Keeping': the story of a woman embroiled in a relationship marked by coercion and violence. These are close-to-the-bone pieces, harrowing and exact.

Reviews

"Kim Moore is the most compelling poet under review because she is least afraid of the dark sounds speaking through her. She welcomes and invokes duende: the unworldly and worldly occupy the same verbal space. Her poetry is always out of the ordinary yet unshowy despite (or because of) her expert and subtle handling of line and form. The result: a balanced arrangement of wild gift and mindful shaping. Moore is also the poet most likely to communicate to people who do not read poetry – yet her work is in no way simple or charming. Much promise yielded, much beckoning for the future." —David Morley

Author Biography

Kim Moore has an MA from Manchester Metropolitain University. Her poems have been published in the TLS, Poetry Review, Poetry London, and elsewhere. Her pamphlet If we could speak like wolves was chosen as an Independent Book of the Year in 2012 and was shortlisted for other prizes. Moore won an Eric Gregory Award in 2011 and the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2010. In 2014 she won a Northern Promise award.