Overview

The algorithm of my own life, faded and spidery, is written, not keyed in. From bombsites used as childhood playgrounds to lockdown FaceTime calls, Kate Foley looks back on almost nine decades of life – a life characterised by curiosity, resistance and a strong connection with the natural world. Appreciation and concern for the planet runs through this frank and moving collection, which muses on the notions of faith and belief, ultimately rejecting both Whitehall politics and traditional religion as inadequate to deal with environmental crisis. Simultaneously nostalgic and highly concerned with the future, Kate Foley’s candid reminiscence and simple use of language draw us softly into consideration of life’s big questions: What’s it all for? How will we be remembered? Will it build again, our earth?

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9781913665760

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Reviews

Kate Foley's Saved to Cloud is alive with questioning. 'What's it all for?' she reports her father asking, and examines, in poems that are, at the same time, both simple and complex, what we can, and can't ever, know. From stone age to Apocalypse, language as messages we're not equipped to hear to love being the only language we need to learn, from childhood reminiscences to the puzzlement of old age, from just being alive to technology, politics, war and climate change - nothing escapes her sharp, wise eye and mind. Foley's poetry, as always, is deeply thoughtful and, to steal words of her own, far 'more than words'. Anne Stewart, ArtemisPoetryKate Foley's poems are wide-ranging, contemporary in tone, and display a clarity and freshness of voice, in questioning this bric-a-brac of days where we live.In tightly-knit, often ironic poems, she gives an original twist to many aspects of our human situation and encourages us to see the possibilities in the singleness of a leaf or in the atom, or In the joy of birds or a walk in the park.These are poems that reflect in many ways the diverse wonders of the universe and all its creatures: How can a leafdancing in the wake of a gullwritethe soul's weatherso we learnto read? Katherine Gallagher

Author Information

Kate Foley is a widely published, prize-winning poet and former president of Suffolk Poetry Society. She has read in many UK and European locations. Her first collection, Soft Engineering was short listed for best first collection at Aldeburgh. Her working life has ranged from delivering babies to conserving delicate archaeological material. She became Head of English Heritage’s scientific and technical research laboratories. Although she has always written poetry it wasn’t until she gave up the day job that she began to publish more widely. She now lives with her wife, between Amsterdam and Suffolk, where she performs, writes, edits, leads workshops and whenever possible works with artists in other disciplines.

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