Description:
Adaptive Strategies for a Sensitive System is a lovingly disordered field guide for surviving a world that keeps turning up the brightness.
Brief description: Kate Ireland is a Glasgow-born poet, artist, and performer. She's performed across UK theatres and festivals, had poetry featured on BBC 6 Music and at Glastonbury, and makes spoken-word-driven music with DJs and electronic artists. Her debut album Self Regulating Behaviours came out in 2024, and in 2025 she premiered her one woman spoken word show Golden Time and other behavioural management strategies at the Pleasance Dome Edinburgh Fringe. Kate also runs the Manchester arts collective Blether (Scottish verb meaning to talk in a long winded way without making very much sense) and works as a creative facilitator within mental health settings and youth engagement. It's safe to say she's keepin' busy.
Review Quotes:
'I wish I could be this delightful vicious and playful and tender all at once in my poetry. What a debut!'
Joshua Idahen
'I love everything Kate Ireland writes. I have been a fan since I first saw her perform - I am so excited to finally be able to hold her brilliant words in my hands, and you should be too.'
Harry Baker
'Hijacks your internal monologue and places a comforting conspiratorial hand on your shoulder, musical, transcendent and gut wrenching all at once'
Antony Szmierek
'Kate Ireland's Adaptive Strategies For A Sensitive System is a witty, gut-punch of poetry that is as playful as it is purposeful.'
Michael Mullen
'A mirror for a generation that is anxious, over stimulated, over explaining itself and somehow still managing to be generous, funny and deeply human. Few writers can capture the zeitgeist the way Kate Ireland can, a punch in the gut that makes you laugh out loud'
Paul Black
'Reading this collection is a marvellous blend of being tucked into the cosiest of beds for a night of thrashing, fairylit dreams.'
Hollie McNish
'A raw, relatable, and snappy song sheet for modern living. Sensitive and searingly honest, Kate deftly explores the juxtaposition of navigating life in your twenties, through her distinctive sharp and lyrical word choice. this collection from Glasgow's shooting star
delivers everything you could hope and more.'
Cat Hepburn