Shortlisted for the Forward Prize 2006
Kate Bingham's second collection, Quicksand Beach, will please fans of her fiction and of her first book of poems, Cohabitation. She has a beautifully poised natural tone composed of intelligence and a slightly subversive sense of humour, and captures her subjects with precision and grace.
These subjects are often domestic: family, friends, childhood memories, visits, walks, meals... Childhood, both the author's and that of her own children, features often. A schoolday 'craze' for fountain pens prompts an affectionate memory of a younger self, watching 'the tip of a new pen touch its first white sheet'.
Bingham's work is both subtle and accessible, a rare commodity in a poet. She can be gentle, passionate, half-mocking and very funny.
Kate Bingham lives in London. She graduated in Modern History at Oxford and has worked as a teacher and programme researcher and at a literary agency. She is the author of two novels, Mummy's Legs and Slipstream (Virago) and is currently working on a film project. She received an Eric Gregory award and has published widely in magazines and newspapers like The Independent, The Rialto, Oxford Poetry and Poetry Wales.
Kate Bingham's second collection, Quicksand Beach, will please fans of her fiction and of her first book of poems, Cohabitation. She has a beautifully poised natural tone composed of intelligence and a slightly subversive sense of humour, and captures her subjects with precision and grace.
These subjects are often domestic: family, friends, childhood memories, visits, walks, meals... Childhood, both the author's and that of her own children, features often. A schoolday 'craze' for fountain pens prompts an affectionate memory of a younger self, watching 'the tip of a new pen touch its first white sheet'.
Bingham's work is both subtle and accessible, a rare commodity in a poet. She can be gentle, passionate, half-mocking and very funny.
Kate Bingham lives in London. She graduated in Modern History at Oxford and has worked as a teacher and programme researcher and at a literary agency. She is the author of two novels, Mummy's Legs and Slipstream (Virago) and is currently working on a film project. She received an Eric Gregory award and has published widely in magazines and newspapers like The Independent, The Rialto, Oxford Poetry and Poetry Wales.