Katrina Porteous is a poet whose work is inspired by the lives, language and ecology of the Northumberland coast. She has written extensively for radio and performance, often working in collaboration with musicians. Her words have been set for BBC Proms (2023) and the Aldeburgh Music Festival (2025).
Her work ranges from audio-visual performances for a planetarium to poetry in Northumbrian dialect: she is President of the Northumbrian Language Society. Katrina has published four collections with Bloodaxe, most recently Rhizodont (2024), which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and which won the Laurel Prize for environmental poetry in 2025.
‘Katrina Porteous has always kept faith with the North East, where times of transition are intensely played out in the post-industrial landscapes. She refuses to ignore local language either, offering work adept in Northumbrian dialect, modern English, and the argot of science. Rhizodont considers deep time, extractive industry, alienation, and the efforts of communities to survive with integrity, and, in a crucial act of imagination, she speaks as other non-human entities, an ice-core, a redshank. We were impressed by the way her attention to the small and local belied the sweep and depth of her project. Rhizodont displays modern lyricism by a senior poet, loving, knowing, and authoritative.’ – Kathleen Jamie, Chair of The Laurel Prize 2025 Judges.