Poet Katrina Porteous

Capturing the sound of a community that resonates

Poet Katrina Porteous recites remarkably at Magdalene college and talks on her new book Rhizodont which was shortlisted for the T.S Eliot prize..

Its not often one gets to meet a truly excellent contemporary poet whose willing to give an exposition tete-a -tete …and fortunately given the chance…. I found the mind of Katrina Porteous a feast of nourishing poetic ideas following an invitation to meet her from Magdalene college Undergraduate Poet Joe Wright.

Katrina was at one time a pupil of Seamus Heaney at University in America and has been shortlisted for the 2024 T.S Eliot prize. Her work captures the living nature of things as she experiences them and often centres on life in the fishing communities of her native Northumberland. She has recently published a new anthology entitled Rhizodont ….which incidentally was the fossil of a creature that emerged from the sea and that we are all descended from in terms of evolution.

Katrina graduated from Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1982 with a double first in History. In 1982-4 she travelled to the USA on a Harkness Fellowship, studying at Berkeley, California, and Harvard Universities. She returned to Cambridge, England, in 1985 and in 1987 moved to her grandparents’ house on the Northumberland coast.

A broadcaster, performance poet, she’s also worked on music collaborations with East Anglian artist, James Dodds, Northumbrian piper Chris Ormston, and English concertina virtuoso Alistair Anderson…..

I found her charismatic style of performance addictive.

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