Fox Populi

by Kate Fox

Fox Populi takes poetry on a hilarious, Creature Comforts-style journey through the crackly airwaves of contemporary culture. Radio-mic in hand, Kate Fox listens in on comedians and psychiatrists, Great North runners and nutters, and the staff of a call centre in modern-day Tynemouth. Herself a familiar voice on BBC TV and radio, this first full-length collection confirms Kate Fox’s position as one of the UK’s most popular poet-comedians.

“Funny, quirky and a wonderful writer.” Sarah Millican, stand-up comedian.

“Sylvia Plath channelling Victoria Wood” Matt Harvey.

Genres: Poetry

136 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 1, 2013

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Kate Fox is a poet based in Northern England who has made two comedy series for Radio 4 and written and performed numerous broadcast poetry commissions as a regular on Radio 3’s The Verb and Radio 4’s Saturday Live. She won the Andrew Waterhouse Award for poetry from New Writing North in 2006. Her publications include We Are Not Stone (Ek Zuban, 2006), Fox Populi (Smokestack, 2013) and Chronotopia (Burning Eye Books, 2017). She completed a PhD in performance in 2017 from the University of Leeds, researching Northernness and comedy. She loves swimming outside, spaniels, Doctor Who and big skies.

Reviews

[Alfie Crow · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic, funny and moving collection by one of the voices of Radio 4's Saturday Live programme and poet in residence of the Great North Run, amongst many other fantastic achievements.
If you only buy one poetry collection this year, make it Fox Populi.
Satirical, heartfelt, wry and often outright hilarious, this is a beautiful collection, and a beautiful book.

[Neil Fulwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Behind the punning title lies a fierce wit and a keen insight into the craziness and frustrations of contemporary life. Fox navigates relationships, marathon running, call centres and automotive breakdowns, writing with conversational eloquence and deceptive ease.

[Shabanah · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extremely enjoyable read. Deceptively light, witty and acutely observed poems. As the title suggests, this collection of verbally inventive poems runs the gamut of low brow, high brow and everything in between: gutsily Yorkshire, working class and female, but at the same time nakedly vulnerable and philosophical too in ways that we can all connect with. Most of these poems reward multiple re-readings, apart from some performance-only poems that rely solely on the punchline for their effect. In fact, the stage is where many of her poems work best; I was lucky enough to see her perform live and found her a fantastically charismatic, entertaining performance poet. Do catch her live if you can, or listen to her on Radio 4’s The Verb, where you can often hear her talking eloquently about poetry.



The author information listed for this book is incorrect! In her own words, from her website bio: ‘ NOT the social anthropologist. Though confusingly I did an ethnographic PhD.’....

More from Wikipedia:

‘Kate Fox is a British poet, author and comedian.[3][4] She lives in North Yorkshire.[5] Her poetry residencies have included: Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4 from 2007–14, the Yorkshire Festival, 2014, the Glastonbury Festival 2013 and the Great North Run, 2011. She also writes topical and personal pieces for Standard Issue magazine and The Journal newspaper.[6] Fox has performed her poetry on BBC One and BBC Two as well as numerous radio shows. She has supported acts including Linton Kwesi Johnson, Hollie McNish, John Cooper Clarke and John Hegley and is a headline act in her own right.