Katrina Porteous Launch Readings
'Rhizodont does for the mining and fishing communities of post-Thatcher Northumberland what Heaney did for mid century Mid-Ulster, archiving the vast richness of its language, culture and work-lives. Porteous’ painterly eye for detail gives depth and resonance to the histories and dramas of her human and non-human subjects alike.' – Dave Coates, Poetry Book Society Summer Bulletin 2024 (Summer Reading)
Katrina Porteous's fourth poetry collection, Rhizodont, is published by Bloodaxe in June 2024. Katrina launched her new book in person at Barter Books in Alnwick on 24 June - where she was in conversation with Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley - and online with Bloodaxe Books on 26 June 2024.
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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An interview with Katrina Porteous went online in The QT on 20 June 2024. She was speaking to David Whetstone about her fourth poetry collection Rhizodont.
‘Poet Katrina Porteous explains the concerns underpinning her new collection, Rhizodont, to David Whetstone’.
The article is subscriber only.https://theqt.online/poetic-rebirth-for-prehistoric-predator/
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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. A follow-up interview in TFP was published online on 7 June 2024 to mark the book's publication. Read here.
'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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ONLINE LAUNCH EVENT
Wednesday 26 June 2024, 7pm BST
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.
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]
