Katrina Porteous
Poetry - Winner 2003
Katrina Porteous is a poet, historian and broadcaster who lives on the Northumberland coast. She writes about the relation between culture and the natural environment, and her special interests include the Northumbrian fishing industry, which she has researched extensively from medieval to modern times. She especially enjoys collaboration with musicians and scientists. These interests coalesce in her experimental radio work, which has been described as ‘extending the boundaries of the genre’.
Katrina was born in Aberdeen, grew up in County Durham, read history at Cambridge and studied in the USA on a Harkness Fellowship. A Gregory Award winner, she has been poet-in-residence in schools in Boston, USA, the Shetland Islands and at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. Her work in Northumbrian dialect, and on place and local distinctiveness, has received national recognition. She was a contributor to Common Ground’s encyclopaedia, England in Particular, and was a speaker at the New Networks for Nature seminar in 2010. She is President of the Northumbrian Language Society.
Katrina’s publications and collaborations include The Lost Music (Bloodaxe 1996), The Wund an' the Wetter (Iron Press 1999), Turning the Tide (Easington 2001), Dunstanburgh (Smokestack 2004), Longshore Drift and The Blue Lonnen (Jardine Press 2005 and 2007). Sound-poems broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4 include, with producer Julian May, The Refuge Box, Dunstanburgh Castle, Longshore Drift and Beach Ride; and with other producers, Late Blackbird, Borderers, This Far and No Further and An Ill Wind. Katrina is currently writing a new piece for Radio 3’s ‘Between the Ears’ to be broadcast later this year.