Katrina Porteous Readings
'Katrina Porteous’s Rhizodont is a polyphonic hymn to England’s North-East coast ... it ranges nimbly across historical timescales and between Northumbrian dialect and scientific discourse. [...] Intimate and elegiac as a record of the recent past, Rhizodont is also a dazzling meditation on the relationship between man, nature, and machine.' – TS Eliot Prize Judges' comment
Katrina Porteous's fourth poetry collection, Rhizodont, was published by Bloodaxe in June 2024. It was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2024.
Rhizodont takes its name from the three-metre-long fossil fish found on the Northumberland coast in 2007, and moves from familiar places along the North-East coast to global questions of evolution, survival and extinction – in communities and languages, and in the natural world.
Katrina launched her new book in person at Barter Books in Alnwick on 24 June 2024 - where she was in conversation with Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley - and online with Bloodaxe Books on 26 June.
Rhizodont follows Katrina Porteous's third collection Edge (2019), which gathered together poems from her scientific collaborations. Her two earlier collections, The Lost Music (1996) and Two Countries (2014), were concerned with the landscapes and communities of North-East England. All four collections are published by Bloodaxe Books.
Poet and historian Katrina Porteous was born in Aberdeen, and grew up in County Durham. She has lived on the Northumberland coast since 1987. She was presented with a Cholmondeley Award in June 2021, alongside fellow Bloodaxe poet Susan Wicks. The Cholmondeley Awards recognise the achievement and distinction of individual poets.
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Katrina Porteous's new collection Rhizodont is featured in Write Out Loud following her in-person launch in Alnwick on 24 June 2024. Greg Freeman was in the audience. Read his review here.
A review of Katrina Porteous's reading in Wooler, Northumberland, on 15 April 2023 was featured by Greg Freeman in Write Out Loud here. 'Under the Ice' was her fifth and final collaboration with the late composer Peter Zinovieff. The sequence is now published in her fourth collection Rhizodont (2024).
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Katrina Porteous was interviewed for The Friday Poem of 31 August 2023. The piece is available to read online here and is illustrated with photographs of Katrina, some taken with the fishermen about whom she has written. The piece previews her fourth collection Rhizodont.
'Rhizodont is about survival and extinction within cultures, communities and languages, as well as in the natural world.' – Rowan Bell, The Friday Poem
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The BBC Radio 4 feature The Susurrations of the Sea, broadcast on 15 December 2022, features a series of poems responding to the sounds of the sea by Katrina Porteous now published in her fourth collection Rhizodont (on pages 13, 14, 53, 96-7 and 112). The programme was one of her many collaborations with producer Julian May. Listen via BBC Sounds here.
'Katrina writes a new sequence of poems in response to the sounds of the sea and these run through the programme like breaking waves, a choppy sea and an ocean swell.'
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UK environmentalist and author Hugh Warwick chose Katrina Porteous’s Rhizodont as one of his three favourite books of 2024 on the US books website Shepherd.com.
'...this is just stunning. Ideas cover time, deep time - and her deep connections to the place - her place in Northumberland on the north east coast of England. You do not need to know her home to become utterly absorbed in the stories she tells.' – Hugh Warwick (Top 3 Books of 2024), Shepherd Books, on Rhizodont.
Read the feature here.
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Extracts from the TS Eliot Prize Shortlist Readings were broadcast on BBC Radio 4's The Verb on 19 January 2025. Listen via BBC Sounds here. Available until 18 February. Katrina's reading features from 12:06.
FORTHCOMING EVENTS
Saturday 10 May, 7.15pm
Hexham Book Festival: Gillian Allnutt & Katrina Porteous
Queen’s Hall, Hexham
Katrina Porteous will be reading alongside Gillian Allnutt, whose new collection lode is published in May.
More details coming soon.
PAST EVENTS
Sunday 12 January 2025, 7pm, TS Eliot Prize Shortlist Readings, London
Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, SE1 8XX
Poets shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize 2024 were invited to read from their shortlisted collections at London's Royal Festival Hall on 12 January 2025. The event was hosted by poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan. Bloodaxe poets Katrina Porteous and Helen Farish have been shortlisted for their fourth collections Rhizodont and The Penny Dropping.
The event was recorded, and a video will be made available in due course.
An audio recording is available. Katrina is introduced at 6:00 and Helen at 1:00:10.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NumboDkFRHk
Extracts from the TS Eliot Prize Shortlist Readings were broadcast on BBC Radio 4's The Verb on 19 January 2025. Listen via BBC Sounds here. Available until 18 February. Katrina's reading features from 12:06.
ONLINE LAUNCH
Wednesday 26 June 2024, 7pm
Online launch reading by Matt Howard and Katrina Porteous
Katrina Porteous joined fellow Bloodaxe poet Matt Howard to celebrate the publication of their new poetry collections. They both read from their new books and discussed them with each other and with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley. Their readings were followed by a wonderful conversation about poetry and the natural world.
Available to watch now on our YouTube channel.
PAST EVENTS
Interview with Katrina Porteous for the Poetry App 'Poesie', 30 April 2021
Katrina spoke in depth about her poetry, and about the formative experience of spending time with the fishermen of the Northumberland coast where she lives, She read two poems from Edge - more are featured on the Poesie App. She was responding to questions from Ben Bregman of Poesie.
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Katrina read at an event in Stockton on 20 July 2019 marking the 50th anniversary of the first humans landing on the Moon as part of NASA’s Apollo 11 lunar mission. Read more about her connection with space here.
Katrina Porteous was interviewed about her radio poem Dunstanburgh (in Two Countries) on Fence Me In, BBC Radio 4, Sunday 4 August, 1.30pm. Listen here.
She gives an account of the radio programme on her blog here.
Katrina was interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Front Row in November 2019. She talked to Kirsty Lang about space, science and her 2019 collection Edge. Listen here. (intro & from 18:09).
[24 January 2024]
