Katy Evans-Bush was born in New York and has been living in London since she was 19. In the 1990s she had three children in four years, and chose that moment to start writing again. Since then her poetry and essays have appeared on both sides of the Atlantic and online. She is featured in the anthology The Like Of It (Baring and Rogerson, 2005), and is a regular contributor to the online Contemporary Poetry Review. Katy writes the blog Baroque In Hackney. She is divorced, and her children make their own lunches.
Why do you blog? > I think I'm trying to make a delightful thing. I've always written in notebooks. The day I started my blog I looked at the blank space and suddenly realized it was the best empty notebook I'd ever had.
What are your favourite blogs? > I can't choose just a few! Maybe these: Non-Working Monkey for being fun; Madame Arcati, who has been compared to 'the News of the World getting off with the TLS at a drag ball'; and oh, too many to choose... That's So Pants... A Dress a Day...
What are you reading at the moment? > Paul Muldoon's Oxford lectures, The End of the Poem; Ruth Fainlight's poetry; and several books about Louis MacNeice.
What is the best novel you've ever read? > At opposite ends of the spectrum: Vanity Fair; and Nothing by Henry Green.
What is your favourite poem? > Among many, many others: 'Autumn Journal' by MacNeice; or something by Donne; or 'Supernatural Love' by Gjertrud Schnackenberg; and something by Michael Donaghy, maybe 'Caliban's Books'.
What is your favourite movie? > The Philadelphia Story.
What is your favourite song? > Well, I find myself singing 'Accentuate the Positive' quite often.
Who is your favourite composer? > Mozart. I love him with a passion.
Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind? > The need for a standing government, as Thoreau put it. Imagine my horror, as a hippie anarchist teenage poet, when he was appropriated by the ultra-right.
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > There is no such thing as empirical reality.
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > That there is only one true creed.
Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? > The Geography of the Imagination by the Modernist critic Guy Davenport. His essays roam cultural history and make connections, give significance to small things, trace lines of descent, map the landscape of thought. When I read it I was very young and didn't realize he wasn't mapping the whole history of thought. I thought he knew everything.
Who are your political heroes? > The suffragists. They were terribly brave and visionary. And Emma Goldman.
What is your favourite piece of political wisdom? > All women and men are created equal.
What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > The twisting up of religion with politics.
Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > Noooo... or someone with radically different aesthetic ideas. Or who didn't care about food.
What do you consider the most important personal quality? > Largeness of spirit.
What personal fault do you most dislike? > Small-mindedness.
Do you have any prejudices you're willing to acknowledge? > I hate people who eat chicken on the bus, people who sit on the outside seat in the bus and expect you to climb over them, and people who play music on the bus. I assume the worst about them.
What is your favourite proverb? > I love proverbs. Locking the barn door after the horse has bolted.
What commonly enjoyed activities do you regard as a waste of time? > Reality TV. Don't even get me started.
What, if anything, do you worry about? > My kids. Being burgled. Losing things. Falling down the stairs. Going blind. Not writing. Not getting published. Being single forever. Being poor when I'm old. Living too far away from my family. Reality TV ruining the world.
Who would play you in the movie about your life? > My dream is to become worthy of being played by Judi Dench, but my children have assured me this will never happen.
Where would you most like to live (other than where you do)? > In a house. Seriously. If not in London, then in New York, either the City or the Catskills.
What would your ideal holiday be? > I don't really do holidays. Something with lots of books, a laptop, good internet and coffee shops.
What do you like doing in your spare time? > My what?
How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? > I'd buy a house, work only three days a week, make sure my whole family was sorted out, and I'd also get a place in the Catskills.
What animal would you most like to be? > I always wanted to be a duck. I seem to have that in common with Geoffrey Chaucer.
[The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature. A list of all the profiles to date, and the links to them, can be found here.]