Karen Hayes

Karen Hayes first full collection, The Houses Along the Wall - a Pembrokeshire poetry cycle, was published by Holland Park Press in 2018. Karen spent the early part of her working life as an actor and musician and became an ensemble member and lyricist and later artistic director of the Bristol-based theatre collective Public Parts. From theatre she moved towards lyric and libretto writing and poetry and found herself creating verbatim texts with marginalised groups, most particularly with...See more

Karen Hayes first full collection, The Houses Along the Wall - a Pembrokeshire poetry cycle, was published by Holland Park Press in 2018. Karen spent the early part of her working life as an actor and musician and became an ensemble member and lyricist and later artistic director of the Bristol-based theatre collective Public Parts. From theatre she moved towards lyric and libretto writing and poetry and found herself creating verbatim texts with marginalised groups, most particularly with people living with dementia. She has produced two anthologies of 'dementia poetry' as well as two opera libretti and a song cycle, each dealing with aspects of living with dementia, the fading of memory and the poetic language which evolves from the experience. I Had an Angel, written with composer John O'Hara, was produced live and also as an opera film for WNO. The Bargee's Wife, also written with John O'Hara, was produced as a community Opera for the 3 Choirs Festival as was their song cycle I Can Hear You Waiting. She created a libretto for an Oratorio with composer Thomas Johnson The Street of Bugles which was performed at the 3 Choirs Festival and a cycle of poetry to accompany an arts installation A Cargo of Curiosities with fellow writer and film-maker Chris Salt. She was Charles Causley poet-in-residence at Cypress Well in 2016. In 2017, her poem The Belgians won the Foreign Voices competition. See less