Rhizodont

Katrina Porteous was born in Aberdeen, grew up in Co. Durham, and has lived on the Northumberland coast since 1987. She read History at Cambridge and afterwards studied in the USA on a Harkness Fellowship. Many of the poems in her first collection, The Lost Music (Bloodaxe Books, 1996), focus on the Northumbrian fishing community, about which Katrina has also written in prose in The Bonny Fisher Lad (The People’s History, 2003). Katrina also writes in Northumbrian dialect, and has recorded her long poem, The Wund an’ the Wetter, on CD with piper Chris Ormston (Iron Press, 1999). Her second full-length collection from Bloodaxe, Two Countries (2014), was shortlisted for the Portico Prize for Literature in 2015. Katrina has been involved in many collaborations with other artists, including public art for Seaham, Co. Durham, with sculptor Michael Johnson, and two books with maritime artist James Dodds, Longshore Drift (Jardine Press, 2005) and The Blue Lonnen (Jardine Press, 2007). She often performs with musicians, including Chris Ormston, Alistair Anderson and Alexis Bennett. She is particularly known for her radio-poetry, much of it produced by Julian May. One of these poems, Horse, with electronic music by Peter Zinovieff, first performed at Sage Gateshead for the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival 2011, is published as an artists’ book and CD, with prints by Olivia Lomenech Gill (Windmillsteads Books, 2014). Katrina’s third full-length collection, Edge (Bloodaxe Books, 2019), draws on three collaborations commissioned for performance in Life Science Centre Planetarium, Newcastle, between 2013 and 2016, with multi-channel electronic music by Peter Zinovieff: Field, Sun and Edge. Sun was part of NUSTEM’s Imagining the Sun project for schools and the wider public (Northumbria University, 2016). Edge, a poem in four moons incorporating sounds collected from space missions, was broadcast as a Poetry Please Special on BBC Radio 4 in 2013. Her fourth poetry book from Bloodaxe, Rhizodont, will be published in June 2024.

9 Introduction

13 How the Fishes Listen
14 Ingredients


BOOK I: CARBONIFEROUS

I Horden – Seaham
17 Tinkers’ Fires
18 Kittycouldhavebeen
20 Tiny Lights
21 Wildlife
23 Coastal Erosion
24 A Short Walk from the Sea’s Edge
26 Painted Ladies
27 Speckled Wood
28 Hermeneutics

II North Shields
29 Wooden Doll
30 Saa’t
32 Low Light
34 Shields Gut

III Low Hauxley – Warkworth
35 Passage Migrants
37 Northern Wheatear
38 Tudelum
39 Sand Martins
40 Bloody Cranesbill
41 Cormorant
42 Cubby
43 Birds
45 Fog
46 Wishbone
47 Linnets
48 The Braid
49 Grey Heron
50 The Auld Watter
51 Full Tide on the Coquet

IV Beadnell – Bamburgh
52 Can
53 Off Beadnell Point
54 Sandylowper
55 A Lang Way Hyem
67 Goldcrests
68 Arguments
69 The Long Line
73 A Hut a Byens
75 The Tide Clock

V Holy Island – Cocklawburn
77 The Fulmar
78 The Old Lifeboat House
79 Many Hands
80 Gleaners
81 Philadelphia
82 Gateway
83 Red List Species
84 Absences
85 Woven
86 Beblowe
87 Anonymous
88 Dig
89 Arctic Terns
91 Begin Again
92 Cocklawburn
93 #rhizodont


BOOK II: INVISIBLE EVERWHERE

96 Organic
97 Sea Chant 1
97 Sea Chant 2
98 The Website at the End of the World

99 INGENIOUS
99 1 Autonomous
99 I
100 II Landscape for an Autonomous Vehicle
100 III Sellafield ‘Legacy’ Storage Ponds
101 IV CARMA
102 V MIRRAX
103 2 Space
103 I ADR
103 II
104 III Sample Analysis on Mars
105 IV Ingenuity Has Photographed Perseverance
106 3 Cybernetics
106 I
106 II
106 III
107 IV Moon
108 V Human
109 VI Autonomous
109 VII
110 VIII I Want to Step Inside You, Computer
111 IX
112 Wave

113 UNDER THE ICE
113 1 Unseen
114 2 Float
114 3 Thwaites
115 4 Antarctica Without Its Ice
116 5 Five Eyes
117 6 Cosmogenic Nuclide
118 7 Basal Shear
119 8 Invisible Mending
120 9 Ice Core
120 10 Waves
121 11 Numerical Ice Sheet Modelling
122 12 Melt
123 13 Remote Sensing

127 Notes
154 Acknowledgements
158 Biographical note