Katie Ailes

Image credit: Robin Mair

Katie is an acclaimed spoken word poet who composes for both page and stage.

As a solo artist, she has performed at festivals across the UK including Glastonbury (where she served as the 2023 Poet in Residence), Paisley Book Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Hidden Door Festival, StAnza, Take One Action Film Festival, and the Byres Road Book Festival. She has performed with organisations including the Scottish Book Trust, the Centre for Poetic Innovation, Scottish PEN, the National Library of Scotland, the Glasgow Women’s Library, St. Mungo’s Mirrorball, the Scottish Poetry Library, Apples & Snakes, Bad Betty, Shore Poets, Sonnet Youth, Speakin Weird, Boomerang Club, TEDxUGlasgow, and more.

Since 2015 Katie has collaboratively devised and performed Loud Poets events with I Am Loud CIC. She has toured the UK and Europe with Loud Poets, including performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the Brighton Fringe, Prague Fringe, Push the Boat Out Festival, VERVE Poetry Festival, Hidden Door Festival, VAULT Festival, StAnza, C-Art Festival, Word Power Radical Book Fair, Stag & Dagger Festival, Wickerman Festival, and Stowed Out Festival. Katie has performed with Loud Poets for organisations including the Scottish Government, National Museums Scotland, Glenfiddich, Oxfam, Fathers Network Scotland, and more.

Katie’s poetry has been published in Sleekit: Contemporary Poems in the Burns Stanza (Tapsalteerie, 2024), A Year of Scottish Poems (Macmillan, 2018), The Herald (2016, 19), Gutter (2019, 21), Glasgow Women Poets (Four-em Press, 2016). She was published in the 2016 ‘House of Three’ series alongside Katy Ewing and Iona Lee, and self-published her debut pamphlet ‘Homing’ in 2015.

In 2019, her poem ‘Outwith’ was chosen as one of the Scottish Poetry Library’s Best of the Best Scottish Poems. She was longlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award in 2022 and shortlisted for the Scottish Book Trust’s New Writers Award in poetry in 2021. In 2015-16 she was awarded a place in the St. Mungo’s Mirrorball Clydebuilt Mentoring Scheme and mentored by Liz Lochhead.

Katie has written poetry on commission for organisations and businesses including Glastonbury Festival (Poet in Residence 2023), Glenfiddich, the Internet Watch Foundation (25th anniversary film), Shelter UK, Future X Global, Brand Calibre Glasgow, StAnza, Glasgow Women’s Library, Experimental Words, Rally & Broad, Young Women’s Movement Scotland, the Scottish Poetry Library, Flourish Dunfermline, and Quotidian Magazine.

You can watch videos of Katie’s poetry via this YouTube playlist and read reviews of her work here.

To enquire about bookings and commissions, please use the Contact form on this website or email Katie directly at kathryn.a.ailes (at) gmail.com.

“The lyrical eloquence of Katie Ailes is remarkable: during the performance she speaks of refugees and recites a poem to her daughter. Her writing touches these subjects lightly, never clumsily raging but entreating us to feel like her – something you cannot help but do.” —Caitlin Powell reviewing Loud Poets at Edinburgh Fringe for The Student, 2017