The Matter is my second collection of poems. Its themes include the creative spirit, the natural world, the conjunction of history and mythology, and the resonance of mortality.
Kate Innes examines the shape of the past beneath our feet – on land, on shore, by sea. These deceptively spare ancestral poems are textured, mineral and earthy; they act as both exhumation and incantation to bring those who went before us back to life. ‘Where do we come from?’ and ‘Where do we go to?’ are questions most of us would like the answers to – Innes provides both insight and admonition to help us shape our future from the past. Di Slaney – poet and Candlestick Press Editor
Innes writes as an excavator – tender, methodical, quietly reverent to the past. Her poems place delicate images alongside the forensic, capturing both grief and the strange immortality of objects, the traces we leave behind. She explores the spaces between what science can prove and what memory or imagination may reclaim – probing loss, material remains, and the persistent yearning to understand. Deb Alma – poet and founder of The Poetry Pharmacy
‘The Matter’ is ink, ochre, eggshell, geography, bronze, mist; it is mollusc, split fruit, cigarettes, chaff, gravity, and clay. Kate Innes shows us that matter leaves marks like fingerprints and scars, photographs and paintings, carbon seams and ancient scripts. She explores these interactions in poems that resonate with song, and weaves into these songs the moods and purposes which both sustain and concern us. This is a collection whose roots in the ancient and more recent past enable a present voice which is assured and graceful in its physicality. Liz Lefroy – poet and winner of the Roy Fisher Prize
Some of the poems in The Matter feature in a new documentary by ArtScape: Helen Garrett - Befriending the Mystery. It follows visual artist, Helen Garrett, as she prepares for her solo show at the Bridport Arts Centre in November 2025 and explores the power of collaboration between different artforms as Helen and I write and paint in conversation with one another.
The film will premiere at the Bridport Arts Centre as part of the Private View event for Primordial Dance – Saturday 29th November 6pm. Tickets available here
ArtScape is a film company that makes documentary films featuring the arts, landscape, geology, archaeology and history. Their films explore Dorset's unique cultural heritage and the places and people that bring it to life.
If the land was dragged from under your feet,
and you smashed your anger against a ship,
and drew back your arm and threw
your grief far out into the waves,
what would you get in return?
The sea holds all in its storms.
Kneads away the sharp pain,
nibbles down the hard edges,
rubs and rubs with its relentless
particles, carving and shaping,
until you see a beacon on the beach,
shining on its own sand island,
glowing on a dull day, taking in light
and letting it play in and around
its new boundaries. Your heart –
reflective, burnished, salvaged.
Like Nile mist gathered in a petal’s palm
or a girl’s long hair caught in a comb
the slap of mud-bricks drying in the sun
the chaff flying up from a winnowing pan
the weight of granite on calloused hands
or the rise of waterfowl from stands of reed
Like a crocodile’s nest of pulsing eggs
or hollow stones strung around the necks of the dead
were the words of the desert’s throat
before the translators began.
