Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

   Cat Kist is an excellent selection of poems about cats. The book is very well presented and of good quality. The bookmark with children’s poems about cats is an excellent addition. The cover, front and back, is of fine quality and the drawings and photographs add character to the poems and don’t seem to overshadow the poems, instead the artwork seems to make the writing stand out more. The layout of the poems is clear and easy to follow, which suggests the book could be enjoyed by younger readers, as indeed it could. But I think the book is aimed at adults of twenty years plus, but grown-up children could value Cat Kist too, it depends on the child. But it needs to be remembered that an adult can think like a child, but a child can’t think like an adult. And some of the poems contain swearing and scary/horrid ideas more appropriate for grown-ups.

Among the many I like my favourites are Organic and Non-organic
Cat by Shamim Azad (p14) and Biggle Puss, Maine Coon, by Zorina Ishail-Bibby (p.73) I like the first poem for its humour. Also, if you have a cat, the poem makes you think which kind, organic or non-organic? It portrays exactly how people treat their cats. I value this realism. I like Biggle Puss, Maine Coon because it fearlessly shows how ‘besotted’/‘dotty’ a pet and their owner feel towards each other; how much love can exist between an animal and a human. And the beautiful images make you feel this love in the poem. Of those I don’t like, I want to discuss Killing Cats by Jim Burns (p37). Its horrible images hurt a cat-lover like me. The things the characters in the poem say show that they think the child is too naive to understand what it means to put a cat to sleep. The poem may be ironic, but the ending is sad. The child doesn’t seem to know how to care for or value a cat if he/she thinks they ‘could kill her with kindness’. And if any man said, ‘they don’t feel a thing’ to me, I would want to hit him!

   But as I said, Cat Kist is an excellent selection of poems about cats.