Photo credit: Sophie Davidson
Kate Wakeling grew up in Yorkshire and Birmingham. She writes for adults and for children. Her work has been commended in the Forward Prizes for Poetry, awarded the CLiPPA prize for children’s poetry and nominated for the Carnegie Medal. She has been described in The Guardian as ‘a poet to watch, her work an April rainbow of freshness and surprise’ and her work for children has been praised as ‘clever, funny, inspiring’ (The Sunday Times) and ‘both limpidly welcoming and profoundly meaningful’ (The Guardian).
A pamphlet of Kate’s poetry, The Rainbow Faults, is published by The Rialto and other work for adults has been published widely, including in The Poetry Review, The Guardian, The Stinging Fly (forthcoming), Poetry London (forthcoming), Magma, Oxford Poetry, Stand Magazine, PROTOTYPE 5, Butcher's Dog, And Other Poems, 3:AM Magazine, 14 Magazine, The Rialto, The Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt) and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
Kate’s books for children include Moon Juice and Cloud Soup, illustrated by Elīna Brasliņa and published by The Emma Press, and A Dinosaur at the Bus Stop, a collection for younger readers (age 4-7) published by Otter-Barry Books and illustrated by Eilidh Muldoon. Moon Juice won the CLiPPA prize in 2017 and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal, and her other two children's books were shortlisted for the CLiPPA in 2022 and 2024. A Dinosaur at the Bus Stop won The Week Junior ‘Book of the Year’ Poetry Award in 2024 and Kate's collections have variously been selected as Books of the Month in The Guardian and The Scotsman, and as a ‘Best Book for the Summer’ in The Sunday Times. In 2022 Kate was commissioned by the Poetry Society to write a poem to mark the 75th anniversary of the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree.
Kate is writer-in-residence with Aurora Orchestra and co-creator of the Far Far Away series of children's storytelling concerts. Her scripts for Aurora, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Concert Orchestra have been performed widely, including at Southbank Centre, the Barbican, Kings Place, LSO St Luke's, Snape Maltings, the Melbourne Festival and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
Her poems have been set by composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad in a song cycle for children, The Thought Machine (Champs Hill Records) and in a work for adults, everything grows extravagantly, co-commissioned by the Oxford Botanic Garden and Oxford International Song Festival, which received a 5* review in The Times and was later described as 'beautiful, profound and subtle' in the newspaper's Critics Choices for 2021. Kate has collaborated with Cecilia McDowall for Snape Maltings’ ‘Friday Afternoons’ programme and on a number of choral works for adult choirs internationally, and with Christopher Fox on The air is just desire, a response to Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10 for soprano and string quartet which was premiered at the 2022 Dartington Festival.
Kate loves performing her work, particularly for family audiences, and appearances include at Shakespeare's Globe, the Cheltenham Literature Festival, the Cheltenham Music Festival, the Bridport Literary Festival, the Stratford-Upon-Avon Poetry Festival and the Imagine Children’s Festival at Southbank Centre. She often visits primary and secondary schools, and delivers creative workshops for children with special education needs and disabilities.
Kate studied music at Cambridge University and holds a PhD in Balinese gamelan music and postcolonial theory from the School of Oriental & African Studies. She writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement and reviews contemporary music for BBC Music Magazine.
A pamphlet of Kate’s poetry, The Rainbow Faults, is published by The Rialto and other work for adults has been published widely, including in The Poetry Review, The Guardian, The Stinging Fly (forthcoming), Poetry London (forthcoming), Magma, Oxford Poetry, Stand Magazine, PROTOTYPE 5, Butcher's Dog, And Other Poems, 3:AM Magazine, 14 Magazine, The Rialto, The Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt) and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
Kate’s books for children include Moon Juice and Cloud Soup, illustrated by Elīna Brasliņa and published by The Emma Press, and A Dinosaur at the Bus Stop, a collection for younger readers (age 4-7) published by Otter-Barry Books and illustrated by Eilidh Muldoon. Moon Juice won the CLiPPA prize in 2017 and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal, and her other two children's books were shortlisted for the CLiPPA in 2022 and 2024. A Dinosaur at the Bus Stop won The Week Junior ‘Book of the Year’ Poetry Award in 2024 and Kate's collections have variously been selected as Books of the Month in The Guardian and The Scotsman, and as a ‘Best Book for the Summer’ in The Sunday Times. In 2022 Kate was commissioned by the Poetry Society to write a poem to mark the 75th anniversary of the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree.
Kate is writer-in-residence with Aurora Orchestra and co-creator of the Far Far Away series of children's storytelling concerts. Her scripts for Aurora, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Concert Orchestra have been performed widely, including at Southbank Centre, the Barbican, Kings Place, LSO St Luke's, Snape Maltings, the Melbourne Festival and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.
Her poems have been set by composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad in a song cycle for children, The Thought Machine (Champs Hill Records) and in a work for adults, everything grows extravagantly, co-commissioned by the Oxford Botanic Garden and Oxford International Song Festival, which received a 5* review in The Times and was later described as 'beautiful, profound and subtle' in the newspaper's Critics Choices for 2021. Kate has collaborated with Cecilia McDowall for Snape Maltings’ ‘Friday Afternoons’ programme and on a number of choral works for adult choirs internationally, and with Christopher Fox on The air is just desire, a response to Schoenberg's String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10 for soprano and string quartet which was premiered at the 2022 Dartington Festival.
Kate loves performing her work, particularly for family audiences, and appearances include at Shakespeare's Globe, the Cheltenham Literature Festival, the Cheltenham Music Festival, the Bridport Literary Festival, the Stratford-Upon-Avon Poetry Festival and the Imagine Children’s Festival at Southbank Centre. She often visits primary and secondary schools, and delivers creative workshops for children with special education needs and disabilities.
Kate studied music at Cambridge University and holds a PhD in Balinese gamelan music and postcolonial theory from the School of Oriental & African Studies. She writes regularly for the Times Literary Supplement and reviews contemporary music for BBC Music Magazine.