idle hands &

the devil’s work

Cat Boyd is a Glasgow-based writer, filmmaker and poet. Working in the trade union movement, her creative output explores the intersections of class, agency and history with the non-Political: love, grief, memory and domestic life.

She is assistant editor at Conter, an online magazine covering Scottish politics and culture. She has written extensively on socialism, culture and Scottish independence for academic publications and various newspapers from 2013-2023

Cat has produced short poetry films inspired by Scotland’s industrial past. She makes soundscapes and single-line poetry collages under the name batcaves.

Currently a student on the University of Glasgow MLitt Creative Writing Programme, her short story Beither, a tribute to Edwin Morgan’s Subway Piranhas, was published in issue #50 of the university journal “From Glasgow to Saturn.”

Reader’s Review [edited for brevity]

“Cat Boyd is bitter, hate filled, divisive and a terrorist sympathiser. Her writing and work is full of so many lies I don't know where to start. Far left propaganda.

Sort of rubbish you would get in Pravda. She is an extremist and a loony tune.

By the way. Cat Boyd doesn't shave her armpits. Want to know why? It's a non-issue in itself but in her case it's to protest against the patriarchal society.

As I said. Bonkers.”

Following the primary exhibition of her acclaimed work People I Loved Lived Here Once, Cat hopes to recreate her installation in 2025, with dates to be announced.

Interview in The Herald Newspaper for People I Loved Lived Here Once

Photography by Gordon Terris

People I Loved Lived Here Once was the title of Cat’s final portfolio for her MLitt in Creative Writing at Glasgow University, and is now established as a stand-alone piece of art in itself. People I Loved Lived Here Once is a multimedia exhibition bringing together poetry, performance, and film to honour themes of family, legacy, labour, love, and loss.

 The location, an eighteen-story concrete tower block in Whifflet, Coatbridge, held space for a few days in early September 2024. This work is an evocation, or invocation depending on audience sensibility, of dispersed communities and our growing incredulity to historical memory, as generations become disconnected from places once associated with heavy industry or carbon materials.

 Coatbridge is a town built on such industry: on the extraction and exploitation of coal, iron andsteel. Here, the town - and the tower- serves as an anchor for a ghostly exploration of one family’s past but one that is universal and collectively experienced.

As the industries that shaped this place begin to fade into memory, People I Loved Lived Here Once seeks to unravel the intimate ties that bind us historically to places and people we have left behind and whether rituals and art can forge us back together.

 These works are filled with both foreboding optimism and joyful pessimism; always melancholic, affectionate and bittersweet.

 The high-rise block where the exhibition first took place is the last residence shared by Cat, her father and grandparents: the latter both deceased. It is due to be demolished in the near future, forever changing her emotional cartography.

 Using a mixture of formats to display original works of poetry, including input from some former residents, the exhibition will showcase the "heirlooms" of a family life in Coatbridge. Cat does not claim to represent any existing communities, people or experiences- only her own, and her own desire to speak directly to the past.

 Poetry is showcased via wall-printing, embroidery and inherited ephemera. Cat wants to provoke viewers to problematise the "value" of everyday items and spaces: be it a pair of old wedding gloves or a block of multi-storey flats. Eventually they, like us, will be returned to dust

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