My debut pamphlet, a semi-autobiographical collection of poems with a narrative thread running throughout.

Published by Orange Apple Press in 2020, it is available both in print and as a PDF.

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In her first pamphlet release, Ruthie Kennedy tells the story of divorce, siblings, friendship, love and selfhood in a poetic narrative which feels as at home in each poem as it does pressing forward to the next and sitting comfortably on the heels of the last. Kennedy’s self assured narrator takes us from the precocious over protective sentiments of a child watching the pain of her family around her, to the self aware young adult who finds herself coming late to class with a cup of coffee. Perfectly encapsulating the moments of growth between the evens of life, the moments of movement found in the life of a swaggering introvert, Kennedy presents a collection that can be eaten whole or savoured slowly, luxuriating in the solitude of each piece. – Orange Apple Press

I am star-struck reading this book. Ruthie Kennedy’s writing sets all my nerve endings aflutter. Nobody writes of the thrill and agony of “growing sideways” better. Every sentence and line is itself a kind of throbbing, fizzing nerve ending, sending signals of pain and pleasure and pain-in-pleasure and pleasure-in-pain. This poetry aches with what it feels like to feel. It stings like a grazed knee. If Room to Swing a Cat doesn’t propel its author purring towards literary stardom, there’s no justice in the world. – Colin Herd, editor of Adjacent Pineapple and author of You Name It, Swamp Kiss and more