Rae of Light

          Karina Vidler   Karina lives and works in London. Her poetry pamphlet Facing is published by Prolebooks in Caboodle (six poetry pamphlets in one volume). Karina’s poems have appeared in the magazines Between the Lines , Equinox , 14 , Orbis , The North , Prole , S outh and South Bank Poetry . Karina collaborated with a group of fellow writers to produce the anthology Ordinary Magic (Poets Unlimited).  Her poems have also been anthologised in Genius Floored (Soaring Penguin Press), Seeking Refuge (Cinnamon Press) and Journey to Crone (Chuffed Buff Books) Karina will be reading selected pieces from Facing   at The Fat Cat in Sheffield tonight .    I'll be there too so why not join us for the evening if you're anywhere nearby.   What are you reading at the minute? I’m carrying round a Keats selected poems and reading these whenever I get ...

I wrote poetry long before I became embroiled in fiction. I was 12 and had just started school at St Barnabas College . My English teacher got us to create an anthology of favourite poems. I spent hours trawling through books in the local and school library. I'm talking here about the dark ages before the internet. At any rate, this first dip into poetry soaked the form into my bloodstream through my fingertips as I licked pages to turn them. I didn't always understand the poems but they stirred the embers of a certain something in me. A something my 12 year old self couldn't quite name but felt compelled to rake up into the steady flicker of a pilot flame. And so it began.  While other girls my age were writing in their diaries, I was filling a notebook with poems. Some of these I shared with my mother – my harshest critic. Others I kept to myself because, they voiced my teenage angst – you know, the kind only a teenager can possess. ...