‘I love The Way the Crocodile Taught Me for Katrina Naomi’s cool voice and fierce eye. For her humour and compassion. For her cast of colourful characters: from a cross-dressing step-father to the Kray twins and a dubious lama. For the journey she takes us – from a childhood a lesser poet would have milked for its sob-stuff to a pass high in the Annapurna mountains where, taking the lama’s blessing for her dead mother, she allows her emotion to pour out in a passage all the more moving because of her previous reticence.’ – Vicki Feaver ‘These are fiercely and triumphantly female poems, recording in sensuous detail the objects, clothes, emotions of a difficult childhood, recalling her departed father, her mother’s men, the hated step-father. They are written with brave truth. It’s a vivid collection of elegy and celebration.’ – Gillian Clarke The Way the Crocodile Taught Me is the eagerly awaited new poetry collection by Katrina Naomi. In it she reveals a childhood fraught with family dislocation, upsets and even occasional violence, and finds, through her art, moments of grace, humour and redemption.