Kat Francois – appreciation

Kat François

I met Kat at an event Diversity House was holding in Maidstone on the First World War in Africa. Kat is a performance poet and had been asked to write a poem based on the day’s conference proceedings. I was amazed at what she produced. The poem is published in Diversity House’s We Remember, a publication capturing reflections by diverse peoples – Historian Professor Hew Strachan to history students and school pupils.
Kat had been on a journey of discovery, her partner having spotted the name François on a war memorial in Grenada. Kat looked into it and captured her experience in a one person play which she had self-published. Moving to TSL, allowed her another set of eyes to iron out the few gremlins in the text and to take some of the administrative pressure off her in terms of marketing and sales.
Raising Lazarus is a moving account of her research journey, but more so, of Lazarus’s motives for enlisting and going overseas to do his bit in the 1914-18 war. Sadly, Lazarus never made it home – he lies in a grave, far from home in Tanzania.
Raising Lazarus brings to the fore Kat’s strength as a poet, her quick and perceptive eye capturing people and their emotions, and a raw portrayal of the researcher’s ups and downs in uncovering the past. History doesn’t need to be dull and boring – Kat proves that.