In Translation

Katherine Venn

Katherine Venn was born in London and grew up somewhere between there, the United States, Liverpool, and Kent. She studied English Literature and Language at Oxford, where she read as little poetry as possible before a diploma in Theology and Biblical Studies and then getting her first job in publishing. She lives in south London and is an editorial director at John Murray Press/Hodder & Stoughton. 

Reading Alice Oswald’s Dart in 2002 woke her up to the existence and power of contemporary poetry, and she began writing herself shortly after. In 2009 she took a year out to study the Creative Writing MA at UEA, taking the poetry strand with Lavinia Greenlaw and George Szirtes.

Along with various short prose pieces, an upcoming work of non-fiction and an as-yet unpublished children’s book she writes poetry because it seems to be one of the best ways of paying attention to the world, both interior and exterior – attending to the ‘minute particulars’ as Blake put it – and of thinking about how we relate to it and to each another.   

Having met Westbourne Grove Church’s pastor Chris Thackery in Oxford, Katherine first visited the church in 2006, when she moved to London. She’s always lived on the wrong side of the city to be part of the community, but for the last eighteen months has been grateful to come here and use the retreat room to write. Some of the poems displayed have been dreamed up, written, edited or otherwise tinkered with in the room above the east tower.

The exhibition ran from 3rd January – 21st February 2020.