About Kate

Kate Oldfield runs creative writing, poem-making and writing-for-wellbeing workshops at The Writing Well, and hosts live workshops and spoken word events in Oxford, N. Yorkshire, London, Scotland and beyond.

Kate has worked in publishing for over 20 years, (most memorably setting up of list of erotic fiction for women - not porn - with Agent Provocateur), and latterly as a writing mentor, ‘book fixer’ and non-fiction ghost-writer.

She is qualified in therapeutic & reflective writing practices (Professional Writing Academy, 2020), and has been running workshops – teaching creative writing skills, writing for wellbeing and collaborative poetry sessions – since 2019.

Kate is knee-deep in the first draft of a novel set in WWII Scotland and Bavaria, based on true events. She returns to poetry for solace and soul sustenance, whenever she can (when not wrangling teens and their over-sized musical instruments and trainers, errant family pets and a deep longing to return to the hills with a falcon on her wrist).

Portrait of writer, poet, novelist and writing educator Kate Oldfield

A new novel is brewing

Watch this space…

Kate’s poetry

In 2017, Kate was chosen as one of the St Magnus Music Festival poets in Orkney. She is currently working toward her first pamphlet and is a member of the poetry group Sevenish. Kate attends and runs various open mic events in and around Oxford. From 2021 to 2022, she worked in collaboration with Towpath Productions to produce 'Poetry Afloat,' poetry performances on a converted theatre boat.

Kate also organizes the Spoken Word tent at the Oxford Canal Festival. Her poems have been recently published in South Bank Poetry, Alchemy Spoon, and Spelt Magazine.

‘What a Performance’
© Kate Oldfield

A Dorset Tapestry

A wide March sky,
faintly skeined in cloud.
The needling promise
of green, framed in birdsong.

Sitting back on his boot-heels,
axe flat, billhook down,
he considers the heart of the hedge;
the warp and weft of his morning.

Blackthorn tucked and send,
steeped, enmeshed.
Pleachers low, hazel-bound.
Ditch redug, damp, and black.

Beyond this hedge another
hems centuries of sheep.
Tended by father and grandfather,
flocking their timeworn yarns with care.

Suspended,
the buzzard, making time her own,
lifts and glints above the teeming threads,
until the precipitous moment,

and flight becomes
fall.

Published by Spelt Magazine

Credo

I believe in that line that lingers
beneath the title. Before the first word.
The space where meaning and potential mingle.

I trust in the metaphor, that lives on
long after the poet makes shape
out of stillness.

I have faith in the new image
that catches the heart
to resolve something unsaid.

To lean in to the poetry
is to know there is no cure
for this love. Let words be my witness.

I believe in the white silence
rising beyond the last inked point,
where everything waits,

and wants to be understood.

Published by The Alchemy Spoon Magazine

The Thames at Battersea: Nocturne in Blue and Gold

We walk the river west
to Battersea.
Cross Whistler’s tonal Thames,
bathed in evening haze.

How you love the light
and shade of London.
The ebb and flow.

The quiet spaces.

We find jazz in the park.
A clarinet rises,
shimmies,

floats.

We turn our backs,
the better to feel
the blue notes.

And all suffuse:

air,
colour,
water.

Published by South Bank Poetry

Kate’s YouTube channel

Watch this space - more vids coming soon!

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