By Isabel Rogers
In 2016, Kathryn arrived – wide-eyed, quiet – at my Stanza poetry group and astounded us with her first poem. That electric feeling doesn’t lie. She critiqued too: fierce about poems but gentle to writers (often diffused with a perfectly-timed swear to detonate giggles).
Persuading her to apply for Hampshire Laureate was hard. Naturally, she got it. We shared new work for years, and I loved watching her career soar. Later, we walked through woods where she planned some of her ashes to be scattered, talking about friendship, her husband Ollie, death. And laughed. A lot.
I miss her, and the work that should have come next. She was just getting started.
The Oath
For Kathryn Bevis
Know this, my friend: wherever you now drift,
Although our tether runs unspooled and free,
This will endure. Your planted words took root
Here, grafted truth and wit below the scree,
Recalibrated colour in a world
Your prism split. Now light floats language where
No blunted body could have shouldered in.
Behind your page, synapses spark and flare,
Encoding an escape from time. Your cloud-bright
Version flaunts its playful, fickle sheen,
Incapable of line or boundary. We
Shall honour your unmooring. Speak your name.