'With the intimate air of a secret vouchsafed, Pretenders is an immersive, compelling, original work of documentary poetics. Potts takes on the role of poet as filmmaker, cutting between voices: we feel her guiding presence behind each frame, and her skill. Across the collection's trans-membered testimonies, lyric tension creeps back in via the poems' consummate rendering of hesitation, emotion, and silence on the page. As a study of imposter feelings, Pretenders is revelatory: humane in its ability to hold and make space for vulnerability, and alert to the socio-political dynamics that underpin the impulse to self-doubt. Whatever mode she's working in, Potts is an essential poet. - Sarah Howe

'Where did that voice come from, asks one of the voices here, that was telling me I wasn't doing anything right? This is one of the serious questions Pretenders investigates, together with the ways in which our sense of self is pressure-formed by the roles we perform and are expected to perform. The voices worry about neediness (like you, like me), but their project is thoroughly generous: here are individuals feeling along the paradoxes of pretence and the precarities of selfhood for our collective benefit. Their disclosures, and the author's own, rhyme with Potts' (characteristically sharp-eyed) excursions into historical imposture; the result is a hall of mirrors in which readers may see themselves and others reflected a bit more clearly, a bit more kindly. If you've ever had the feeling that you're not good enough, you should read this book. If you've never had that feeling, then you must read this book.' - Abigail Parry

'Excitement is one thing that is definitely not missing from Kate Potts's Feral. The language here dazzles, astonishes; the poems are alive. I would say that the poet is incapable of writing a predictable sentence, but it feels more true to say that she is incapable of writing a predictable word...To read Feral for a while is to find it bamboozling and beautiful, to want to read it for longer. Once that's done, the only response is to consider it a masterpiece, and to feel that everyone who cares about language should read it.' - Jonathan Edwards, Poetry Wales

'It has taken Potts seven years to write this follow-up to her debut Pure Hustle. It's been worth the wait. Feral is musical, joyously weird and filled with moments of pure pleasure.' - Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph (Poetry Book of the Month)

'Kate Potts's Feral is a revelation of beauty, precision and force' - Kate Wakeling, Morning Star (Poetry Books of the Year 2018)

'Seven years in the making, Feral is the follow-up to Potts's first collection Pure Hustle. It's worth the wait and will surely yield more and more of its gifts on multiple readings.' - Dzifa Benson, Poetry London

'And here's a lovely paradox to ponder: for a book that is called Feral, the wildness inherent within it is tremendously well channelled and controlled.' - Rishi Dastidar, Magma

'Feral is a storehouse of manifold enchantments: a book in which lore and personal iconography are melded to startling effect. The technical assurance displayed here alongside a strong beating heart make for a sonically and emotionally rich reading, and re-reading, experience. This collection is "a feat of balance", as the poem "Iron Horse" has it, where each component gives shape and function to the elegant motion of the whole.' - Kayo Chingonyi

'These are poems of a marvellously observed, bodily interiority which engage with our animal selves, at a loss in the concrete warrens of our cities, as they starve or gorge, roam or home. The resulting book is deeply personal, compelling, occasionally hilarious and frequently unsettling as the "strange fish" of our thoughts emerge from their "iron guardedness" and hitch themselves to the amazing railings of these poems. And the radio poem The Blown Definitions is a wonder, a whole island mythos to itself. Kate Potts is one of the foremost writers of our generation. Buy this monstrously brilliant book.' - Fiona Benson on Feral

'Intricate, vital-tender, dazzling work -- Potts' poetry sings even as it bares its teeth.' - Eley Williams on Feral

'Pure Hustle is a gem of book in which Kate Potts conjures a poetry which astonishes and moves the reader. The texture of her language - its deft and surprising turns, its intense musicality - allows the many voices in these poems to soar. Her curiosity and profound intelligence means that the poems range wonderfully far and wide in setting and subject-matter from the urban clutter of contemporary settings, to modern variations on pastoral, to Penelope weaving, to a beached whale, and more. Kate Potts is a poet whose ear and eye for her work are as close to perfect as can be: Pure Hustle is pure gold.' - Jo Shapcott