Kathryn Gray
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kathryngray.bsky.social
Kathryn Gray
@kathryngray.bsky.social
1.1K followers 860 following 190 posts
Poet. Film fanatic. Editor @badlilies.bsky.social. Hollywood or Home, a Sunday Times Poetry Book of the Year, out now: https://www.serenbooks.com/book/hollywood-or-home/ and https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hollywood-Home-Kathryn-Gray/dp/1781727120
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Not been well all week. Feeling a bit better. But ailing, I never noted that Hollywood or Home turned the grand old age of two a few days ago. Thank you to everyone who bought her and who said nice things. I appreciate you hugely, more than you will know (and so does Norma Desmond!).
Norma Desmond, yellow dress and heels. She has curlers in her hair and wields a cigarette. Drowned man to her left. Pure Sunset Boulevard.
October 4, 2025 at 2:16 PM
kathryngray.bsky.social
Sunday evening. A small poem from Hollywood or Home about art, lost love, and reversal of fortune. Guest stars the marvellous Alvin Pleasant Carter, a patriarch of the legendary Carter Family, who pioneered country music. I’ve never performed it at readings. Must fix that.
Songs Alvin Pleasant Carter was a man who knew— a pilgrim of the ultimate tune. A.P. at his counter, hefting over the sacks of brown sugar— years after the road, when he'd lost his Sara, and a man can measure the weight of forever... A.P. knew, stood in that general store, we never hear the songs we are listening for.
September 21, 2025 at 4:17 PM
kathryngray.bsky.social
Sunday night poem from Hollywood or Home. E.T./The Goonies meets mortality. And, oddly, probably the nearest I’ll ever come to an ecopoem, as it dawns on me now.
The Adventurers Out from the drives we join, one by one, and do not ask where the grown-ups have gone. Almost-spring is here again, lovely against our cheeks in the evening air. We have our sweaters on. We do not ask why we are here why tonight. The streamers from my handlebars—so free, so light! Look how big the moon is! someone shouts. Everyone is out. Everyone is out from the drives, even the kids who could never, who could never waggle their way to propulsion, whose mothers cared too much— asthma or dietary problems or one cliché after another serving as the explanation. All are out, as the streetlamps tick and fizz. We could fly! We could do anything! Remember what it's like or never was? Of course, there are the bad guys. Bad guys are everywhere, out of sight, but they are not us. And something not good bleeds from a pipe on the edgelands. Something long suspected by us, but missed by the good, gone grown-ups. The bad guys listen in the dark-windowed vans of the mind you can't see. Now, we must speak softly. We are out for treasure. We are out for trees, and the big moon. A shy boy has a plan and a map. We must be careful of the vans. We have a boy with a plan. We came equipped with torches, the requisite peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches. The bikes slip from our grip. The bikes pile up. The shy boy puts his finger to his lips. Something is moving, he wants to say. Our round, credulous faces burn and thin to the summation of meaning— the beautiful horror, the mangled wonder.
September 7, 2025 at 9:03 PM
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Old photos. My grandmother comforting her little brother, my great uncle Danny, after the Commonwealth Games 1958 cycling road race. He came 8th—pretty darn great. Both of them gone to light now. Amazing people. ❤️
My nan wears a mac. She has a short 1950s do. Danny wears a blanket. He looks dejected, but shouldn’t.
August 30, 2025 at 6:03 PM
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Meryl Streep’s filmography has seen me through the bad times and the good. Here’s a poem from Hollywood or Home, featuring some of my favourite performances.
Meryl Streep is my therapist I met a married man once, on a train. He was handsome. He had the kind of face that made me think of clean, smooth hands. I should add that in the end nothing really happened. I have done terrible things I will not own. The dingo took my baby! Bear with me. Men have left me. No Vietnam. They simply went. You must hear this sort of thing all the time. But. I have stood, hooded, on the jetty; the sea—the sea turned over my mind, roughly. I have been very 'tired and emotional'. I cannot afford a rehab facility. There are not enough Key lime pies in this world for all the people who deserve them. In the face. Yes, this is heartburn. You might be onto something. O Michael! O Michael! O Michael! I worry that I'm all cliché. I like to fake accents with strangers. I suppose that tells you a lot. I suffer from Imposter Syndrome. Or maybe not. I had a farm-
August 16, 2025 at 6:31 PM
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Endlessly in love with Dorothea Tanning. Endlessly in love with her Self-Portrait (1944).
https://www.dorotheatanning.org/life-and-work/view/230/
August 10, 2025 at 6:21 PM
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Six mini love letters to the late, great John Cazale—peerless actor. From Hollywood or Home.
Six Ways of Looking at John Cazale John's eyes— the tender inquisition. You are not, in fact, looking at him. II In makeup, John wears Fredo's face, looks in the mirror, thinks, I can do something with this. III John dropping a gun with convictior inconvincingly. Inimitabl IV John blinking out from the afterlife in disbelief when you bring up his name in the conversation. John rising from his bar stool, singing I wanna hold you so much— VI Wyoming.
August 7, 2025 at 5:08 PM
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Always on the ledge of quitting poetry forever. But a wise friend told me recently: “Don’t quit poetry—quit the business of poetry!” That is, all the things that make you forget your art. A salutary reminder. Here’s a poem from Hollywood or Home. First published in beautiful Poetry Brum!
KATHRYN GRAY Michael McIntyre is worth 50 million dollars Look at my life-control pants and all these undone plans. I don't want to go into the 'emotional baggage', but today I read that Michael McIntyre is worth 50 million dollars; you might well imagine what this knowledge did to me. Yes, I was weeping and shaking and raging-and weep-raging in between the shaking. But Michael McIntyre has the face of a good man who is entirely confident of his goodness. So there's some comfort in that. I've no reason to believe he is less than deserving; at least, in respect of the fact that the good deserve things, and I am not good, even if it's true that I have stood in the coldest rooms, opening up a vein or two, before audiences of nine—or less! But then, some bastard's always got there first, or-worse-their veins are bigger. These days I am nothing but this-this-sack of regret in control pants. Even sacks of regret need control pants; in fact, they need them more than most. This is how life tends to happen: you plane at your soul for the wrong art and end up with the shavings, unless you're Michael McIntyre. A sack of shavings. So you're pretty much average, unless you take it too much to heart. A man I loved once told me I was the funniest woman he'd ever met-and he didn't even drink. Perhaps I should have taken time to probe that. You've got to make your peace. Michael MeIntyre seems like a good man. I wonder if he is.
July 25, 2025 at 5:19 PM
kathryngray.bsky.social
Posting this exemplary poem by an exemplary poet, Kona Macphee, is something I love to do every few years or so. The smallness of it—but the immensity. Utterly beautiful poem-making.
The gift Sometimes the recompense arrives so far ahead of what you'll give that you will fail to recognise the reciprocity, the love that circles in the universe: this life a grace advanced, its knack to meet requital with its cause - the offering up, the giving back.
July 18, 2025 at 8:49 PM
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Hampstead, you’re gorgeous.
View of the pond. Blue sky above with pretty fluffy cloud formation.
June 29, 2025 at 12:26 PM
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Last evening in NYC. What a beautiful trip!
With my daughter. She wears short black dress. Her hair is in a loose ponytail. I have short hair and wear a shirt and shorts.
June 20, 2025 at 9:26 PM
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A reading of my poem 'Bournemouth' for the launch of Rachael Boast's beautifully curated Versus Versus. 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets. A poem that speaks of my experience of GAD, OCD, and scrupulosity, and features an imaginary meeting with Rosemary Tonks AKA Mrs Lightband.
June 14, 2025 at 6:00 PM
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The Choos are out to play today.
Gold-sandal Jimmy Choos
June 7, 2025 at 11:18 AM
kathryngray.bsky.social
Happy Heavenly Birthday to beloved teacher and friend, Michael Donaghy. Here’s one of my favourites of his that I like to post on his birthday.

Miss you, Mikey.
The Natural and Social Sciences We come to Straidkilly to watch the tide go out. A man is loading a wicker basket With small, complicated pink crabs. 'Have we missed it? we ask, 'the tide?' And he, with sincere assurance, 'It'll be back.' A girl inspects an upside-down bike On the road to Tubbercurry. I stop to help but she rights it on its wheels, Shoves off, ticking in the light rain. Musicians in the kitchen, Sunday morning in Gweedore. An American with a tape recorder and a yellow notebook. What was the name of that last one?' The piper shrugs and points to the dark corner. "Ask my father.' The American writes 'Ask My Father.'
May 24, 2025 at 6:43 AM
kathryngray.bsky.social
Tishani Doshi, Tom Warner, me, Sally Read, and Leontia Flynn at the Eric Gregory Awards back in the day. We’re so cute! I can say that now I’m old and can stake no claim to it. Twenty-four years ago.
May 18, 2025 at 8:14 PM
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It's an incredible honour to be included in this hugely important anthology, edited by the great Rachael Boast, with my poem 'Bournemouth'—which has at its heart my long relationship with GAD/OCD/Scrupulosity, and my love for Rosemary Tonks. So grateful to appear alongside so many marvellous poets.
Cover image description: The book's cover features a square-shaped artwork by Polish artist, Julian Stanczak, entitled 'Concurrent Colors'. The painting creates an optical illusion of vertical moving curved lines in red and blue, giving the impression of moving waves or sand dunes. At the edges of the painting the lines thin out so that they resemble a comb effect. The painting has a darker blue framing band around it, filling the extent of the cover. The title of the anthology 'VERSUS VERSUS' is in a large red font at the top of the cover, and the subtitle, '100 POEMS BY DEAF, DISABLED & NEURODIVERGENT POETS', is in a large blue font underneath the square painting. The editor's name, Rachael Boast, is in a smaller red font beneath the subtitle.
April 29, 2025 at 5:42 PM
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As I’m off to NYC in June, here’s a poem from Hollywood or Home, inspired by the ending of As Good as It Gets, which as a film is pertinent to the book in one particular way.
Two Small Erotic Scenes from Imagined New York, with Food 1. Warm Rolls I am thinking of that small place that nobody knows but the cognoscenti. After all these years it's nothing short of a miracle it's still in business-requiring, as it does, such specific conditions for existence; you've joked about it often enough: the early hours, a hard rain's aftermath. See how the lights come on? See? Appointed now, and stubborn as ever_-like the heart. But when you hold one in your palm, and when you bite, you'll understand that miracle again. This is the world nobody knows, outside of the films-nobody but us. So will you rise now, please rise! For the warm rolls? For the warm rolls are the most perfect of all.
April 13, 2025 at 7:53 PM
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A poem from Hollywood or Home about (and not) my favourite movie trope.
The Meet-Cute Of course, a rain will come, the kind you've known, which you choose to interpret as a miracle. How large rain renders gutters elaborate; their fretwork fugitive, an offering to the lost and low of this world. There must be a girl a girl in a cloche hat. The hat will be the colour of a hot blush as hands fly to meet cheeks and lips O to the suddenness of it all. And this we determine behind the black and white. It will be New York. And we may infer that the girl is late for some as yet inscrutable but crucial prior engagement which will never occur. Overcoats and fedoras move the crowd. She has no umbrella. The little cloche hat bleeds crimson, and stockings darken, and she will shoulder through for shelter under an awning. She may be a secretary or perhaps a fragrant stenographer. She lives with a loud mother. She checks her watch, when the smallest drop from the awning's edge turns time into an enormous tear It is hopeless. Across the city, the flower sellers bring in their wares, wet roses proving frail things heavy. And what of the young man who stands next to her? Their faces are the mise-en-scène of a missed coincidence. Somewhere, blocks down, a café with two empty chairs. It will not be now. And the rain, as you know, stops.
April 1, 2025 at 5:55 PM
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Over the last week or so, I’ve been listening to Janis Joplin’s Pearl—for the first time in ages—*as an album* (rather than picking out individual songs). What delight. I’d forgotten just how extraordinary she was. Vulnerable, ferocious, sexy, yearning, wild pioneer. And still timely.
A young Janis Joplin. She has long hair and looks away from camera, sorrow-smiling.
March 30, 2025 at 6:23 PM
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Another milestone in the Empty Nest New Order: first Mother's Day with Eleanor far away. But she's home next week. Here we are in Spain—suddenly, it's a very long time ago, although I still remember this photograph being taken as if it were yesterday. ❤️
My daughter is 6 years old. She is smiling. She wears a dress with patchwork detail. She is smiling and one arm pointing upwards. She holds my hand with her left hand. I am smiling and wearing a tiger-print maxi dress. I am smiling.
March 30, 2025 at 10:21 AM
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A long time ago in Santiniketan, 2013, listening to young girls singing in the dawn—such beauty in their voices and being. A transformative trip for me to West Bengal, following a very difficult period in my life. Gratitude, still.
Outside the Glass Temple in Santiniketan.
March 25, 2025 at 8:02 PM
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Reading, listening to my bf Johnny Cash, and chilling. Pretty good Sunday.
March 16, 2025 at 4:14 PM
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Unexpected shade in the marketing book I’m reading.
26 Getting Into the Mind Today, however, poetry in advertising is as dead as poetry in poetry. One of the biggest advertising successes of recent times
March 16, 2025 at 12:23 PM
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Me and my girl—in ye olden days.
March 15, 2025 at 8:34 PM
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London, I love you so. ❤️
March 9, 2025 at 6:07 PM