Katrina Naomi and Helen Mort’s poetic collaboration – Same But Different – will be launched online on 30 September with the London Review Bookshop and publisher Hazel Press. Same But Different is available to pre-order from London Review Bookshop and from Katrina’s website.

Writing about Same But Different, Hazel Press say: Ted Hughes once wrote: ‘Poetry is a universal language in which we can all hope to meet’. Through a time of separation, isolation and uncertainty, during the UK lockdown of 2020, two poets, Katrina Naomi and Helen Mort started collaborating on a project, Same But Different. It began as a way to reach out to each other and keep writing during these strange, stagnant times, sending writing prompts and visual images from Penzance to Sheffield and Sheffield to Penzance. They had no thoughts of publication, only experimentation and enjoying the process. Like Wang Wei and Pei Di’s, Wang River Collaboration, their poems soon started to speak to one another and are published without attribution. This creative thread has been with them both through the labyrinth of this last year and continues still.  Same But Different offers a year of poetic dialogue, friendship and sisterhood.

One thing to note about Same But Different. None of the poems are attributed. You’ll have to guess who wrote which poem. Neither Katrina nor Helen are going to let slip who wrote which! Find out more on the online launch here.

Hazel Press’s anthology O, edited by Anna Selby, will also be launched at the same event. See you there.