Stand up for stand-up poet, Kate Fox

Kate Fox is our next guest at Sounds About Write, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to host her at Sheffield Plate on Thursday, November 16th. She’ll be performing some poems and talking about her eclectic writing career as a neurodiverse stand-up and stand-out poet, broadcaster and performer. In advance of the evening, we asked Kate to tell us a bit more about her work. Read on to find out why and how she wrote a poem about author Adam Farrer’s mum! And get your tickets here.

1. You have an interesting writing bio and sometimes describe yourself as a stand-up poet. What do you mean by that? 

I did stand up comedy for a few years (and at best was only okay at it) but it helped me develop lots of stage craft which I then incorporated into my work as a performance poet. Also- stand-up poet signals to audiences that I might be funny- and it can be helpful to set that expectation (which doesn’t come with “poet”). It’s on the verge of being an outdated title for me now though.

2. You seem to be able to span the gap between page poetry and performance. Do you think there's a difference between the two and do you know when you're writing, which way a piece will go?

There’s a huge difference and tension between the two for me, and it’s interesting that lots of poetry now bridges that gap more unproblematically than I ever have. 

I sometimes still have an overly binary “It’s rhyming and funny so it’s a performance poem- it’s free verse and sad so it’s a page poem” thing going on. That’s not always helpful- but at the same time I’m very alive to the contexts I write in. Doing radio poems (I used to be a poet in residence on Saturday Live on Radio 4) and residency poems like for the Glastonbury Festival means that for me it makes more sense to be immediate and rhymey and funny. But if people are going to re-read something at their leisure then I can put more layers and complexity in. I associate “Poems just for me” more with the sad free verse type, and rhythmic funny ones to please audiences. Much more interesting things than that are starting to happen in the middle for me. 

3. You speak openly about your neurodiversity and have helped a lot of people to understand their own neurodiversity. Do you think neurodiversity is an advantage or a hindrance as a writer? Or both?

Again, it depends on the context. I have a theory that poetry is pretty much a neurodivergent form. Writing and performance spaces tend to be more accepting of the quirky and the socially unusual. But if you’re a professional writer, there are certain aspects of the freelance life that can be very challenging (the instability for example and the unwritten rules of engagement that govern any creative space). It suits me that I can talk and write about neurodiversity in creative spaces- where there might be temporarily more acceptance by audiences that maybe we could live and speak and think differently than we do. But there’s still a lot of stigmas an stereotypes and wrong assumptions- particularly about autism. The benefit of awareness-raising outweigh the challenges of being “out”- as does the still gradual process of “unmasking” I’m going through as a late-diagnosed neurodivergent person.  

4. You've made a several shows that I’m aware of: Where There's Muck There's Bras and Bigger on the Inside. Where did those ideas originate? 

That feels like a super super open-ended question. Ideas come from a thousand places and feed into the context you’re in at the time and the possibilities you can see (and not see) to do something with them. 

But broadly, Where There’s Muck There’s Bras came out of my PhD research on Northern female comedians, wanting to write a show featuring music hall star Hylda Baker and then meeting an actor who could play her and seeing a commission advertised for the Great Exhibition of the North and broadening it out to be about Northern women generally. 

Bigger on the Inside came because I wanted to explore my autistic identity in performance, but then I realised it needed to be through bigger lenses, and since Doctor Who is a very neurodivergent-accepting show that I love and has been going a long time (and since Jodie Whittaker from Yorkshire became the first female Doctor at the same time as I got my PhD and my autism diagnosis), I realised I could do something with my identification. 

5. Can you tell us anything about the particular challenges of writing a one-woman show?

When I got the commission for the Great Exhibition of the North, I worked with a brilliant director Annie Rigby, who I knew chimed with how I approach things (and who I instinctively think I recognised could support my AuDhD brain, though that wasn’t conscious at the time) and an actor, Joey Holden. It was so wonderful to collaborate in the rehearsal room. I worked again with Annie and the poet Clare Shaw and actor Rachael Abbey on a play about Ted Hughes and Bernard Manning (played by Clare and Rachael respectively) that had a read through during the pandemic at Cast in Doncaster, and I think is the best unseen thing I’ve ever done! In both instances it was wonderful to be convivial and collaborate and have other people to make decisions with and for. 

I’ve often worked on my one-woman shows completely alone- and it can be so hard to make creative decisions out of infinite possibilities- and to think anyone cares about what you’re doing (but it also does give you complete independence and control and freedom to change things). I’m not a trained actor or theatre maker but have gradually come to find some more theatrical ways of bringing my poems and stand up and ideas to life and that’s really satisfying. 

With my first one-woman show, Kate Fox News, I really lacked confidence in my own judgment at times and was trying to blend poetry, spoken word and theatre in a way that wasn’t commonly understood then- so I could easily be knocked off course by other people’s opinions or doubts (including reviewers or audiences). I’ve internalised my own stronger sense of what works now- and how I can still keep playing with the blending of genres. 

6. You're often featured on radio. Is this something you particularly enjoy? Do you have a favourite gig (radio, stage, page etc)?

I trained as a radio journalist and worked as a radio reporter/newsreader for a few years in local radio and see myself as a “radio person”. I particularly love popping up often on The Verb on Radio 3 because Ian McMillan and the team are so eclectic and broad and utterly accept and enjoy how I work in comic and serious and quirky and academic registers all at once. I don’t have to just be one thing! I’ve presented Pick of the Week on Radio 4 a few times, and that’s honestly the most “Pinch me, I’m presenting a show on Radio 4 for a whole 45 minutes” thing. I’d love to do more, lots more, and use some of my journalistic and sound editing skills.

P.s Is it true that you wrote a poem about Adam Farrer’s mum?!

Yes! She’s such a character. One of the Ruby Reds burlesque troupe who featured in the semi finals of Britain’s Got Talent. 

I worked with them for a project during Hull’s City of Culture year, performed this poem with them on stage, and ripped open my dress at the end to reveal bra plus nipple tassels with Philip Larkin’s face on!

Loved reading more about his mum in Adam’s brilliant book.

The Glitter

When Katie Hopkins tells Unruly Woman they’ve eaten too many pork pies, 

they buy one from the service station on the way home 

and Tweet her a picture of their mouths biting through flaky crust into soft jelly. 

Things they don’t need can be farted out with abandon; 

always keep on taking the charcoal tablets and the door open. 

They conduct small symphonies with a mascara wand, 

scrawl red reminders in lip stick,

They leave traces of themselves everywhere, 

they are sparkle from the night before, 

or one of the sequins you find weeks later

stuck in the crevices of her bra.

She’ll talk about everything, as many naughty words as she wants. 

she is a self-help book without the word “Should” in it. 

sometimes she talks with tits and teeth, 

with “Stick your bum out!”, 

she buzzes like a rampant rabbit or just opens her mouth, 

wide as a cave at the bottom of the ocean and screams 

like she was told she couldn't when men pressed too hard, 

leaving bruises like a chain of blue islands across her chest.

She agreed, just that once, to the fireworks they set in her bra,

sparks arc-ing above her like a meteor shower.

It’s her they want to talk to, not the size six models 

who parade mute as the image on a frozen web cam. 

If she wants to get down a hill by rolling, she will. 

She doesn’t want a career or a journey or a dream, just a day out. 

A day out where you laugh at the back of the bus until your knees have gone 

and the tears roll down your face and you can’t stop saying “Oh dear”.

She’s David Bowie, a pirate, a nun. 

The kids recognise her as seaside and pantomime and unicorns,

She grew up too early and now she’ll be playing out forever

because growing old is two hundred dolls house part works

and the neighbour saying “Your life is such a whirl”

with a tut in her voice. 

She knows that the best place to get yourself is in charge; 

but that sometimes freedom

feels like being lifted up on to a table 

as if you are a centre piece. 

Her gusset’s a gateway. 

She wears five pairs of knickers, in fact her knickers are bigger than she is. 

Inside she’s glitter and glue.  

Friends are sometimes better than husbands 

and there’s nothing they don’t know about each other, 

including where their scars are and how to shield them 

from the men whose faces are pressed up against the window 

of this sisterhood. 

Sometimes knowing just how much they don’t care any more 

makes her tummy go round like nipple tassels.

She’s felt death breathe in her ear 

like a man standing next to her on a crowded bus. 

She’s ready to kick him in the balls if she needs to, or turn round, 

give him the biggest snog of his life and walk down the steps, 

wiping him off her lips like a promise.

Sometimes knowing just how much they don’t care anymore

makes their tummies go round like nipple tassels.

Knowing our joyous revolutions 

will be dismissed as girls just having fun,

is half the fun.

Sometimes knowing just how much I don’t care any more 

makes my tummy go round like nipple tassels.