About

I am a poet, critic, conversationalist, personal shopper, siren, and housemaid to the gods – at least they think they’re gods. So it said when this blog first opened in 2006. The little gods have grown up and are – as used to be said – beginning the world; the guinea pig died long ago, and I’m frankly too tired to be much of a siren; and yet Baroque in Hackney has a life of its own.

Bio

Born in New York City, I have lived in London since I was 19, and know no better. I have worked in the Penguin Bookshop, for Tower Hamlets Council, on a housing estate in Stepney, as a nanny, as a full-time mum, and once, for a brief unhappy spell long ago, at Liberty. (The shop, not the civil rights organisation.) For well over a decade I’ve been in corporate communications, to wit: copywriting & editorial, press & publicity, publications management, and general comms manager. At the time of writing I am more than happy to discuss consultancies and freelance projects; my other website, katyevansbush.com, explains my services. And it contains a little blog of its own, called Text Pixels.)

Aside from all that, there are many colourful family stories: my maternal grandmother was both a song-and-dance girl in the 1920s and an honorary Blackfoot Indian princess, and Myrna Loy apparently fancied my grandfather – who, in turn, is rumoured to have been a witness of Queen Victoria’s funeral procession. We are descended on one side from the Boones, whose most famous son was the explorer Daniel; and, through them, from John Milton himself. (This became something of a joke in the family when my glaucoma was added into the mix. Oh the laffs.) On the other side, our ancestors included the first man to be hanged for murder in the New World, off the Mayflower. The ignominy persists; there are places where I gather we would not be welcome to show our faces.

My poetry collections are Me and the Dead and Egg Printing Explained, with Salt Publishing, and Oscar & Henry – a pamphlet – with Rack Press. I have written many book reviews, essays and articles, and I am the editor of the semi-annual online arts and literary magazine,  Horizon Review, owned by Salt.

I also teach a class called Making Poetry at the Poetry School in London – and am happy to provide online mentoring, tutorials or editing.

I have lived mostly in Stoke Newington for the past 20 years.