Name: Rhizodont By Katrina Porteous
SKU: 9781780377131
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Rhizodont Summary

Rhizodont by Katrina Porteous

330 million years ago what is now the rocky shore close to Katrina Porteouss Northumberland home was a tropical swamp inhabited by three-metre long predatory fish with huge tusk-like teeth. They belonged to a family of lobe-finned fishes which evolved to move on land as well as swim, and which are the ancestors of all four-limbed vertebrates, including humans. The fossil fish found in Northumberland is called the rhizodont.

Porteouss new collection begins with a lovingly-observed contemporary journey through these ancient landscapes, from the former coal-mining communities of the Durham coast, where the coal-bearing Carboniferous strata are overlain with younger rocks, to the Northumberland shores where the rhizodonts remains were found. Against a backdrop of vast geological time and recent fossil-fuel burning history, these poems address current issues of social and environmental change. They are followed by two sequences about aspects of the latest technological revolution autonomous systems and AI, and the remote-sensing techniques used to explore the most inaccessible reaches of our planet, Antarctica, to measure Earths changing climate.

The poems unfold from Englands North-East coast into global questions of evolution, survival and extinction in communities and languages, and throughout the natural world, where hope resides in Lifes astonishing powers of reinvention.

Rhizodont is Katrina Porteous's fourth poetry collection from Bloodaxe, and extends territory explored in her three previous books. It combines scientific themes from Edge (2019) with the ecological localism of Two Countries (2014) and The Lost Music (1996), both of which were concerned with the landscapes and communities of North-East England.

Rhizodont Reviews

Functioning like a cosmic map from the level of sub-atomic particles to vast celestial bodies, Edge succeeds in wedding the arts with science to make a mesmerising and transporting collection. Porteous makes precise and artful use of scientific terminology to complement her sparse and tightly constructed verse. The full effect is to bring the reader to a state of communion; to instil a sense of beauty and belonging to the world of particles, fields, waves, and the behaviour of massive gravitational bodies. -- Jade Cuttle * PBS Bulletin *
Regardless of their performance roots, I found the poems in Edge to be strong, evocative pieces exploring the cosmos and the creation of matter and life vibrantly and distinctively through image, metaphor and all the tools available to a skilled poet. The fact that, stylistically, they often appear lean and pared down makes their lyrical imagining of highly complex scientific theories all the more impressive. -- J.S. Watts * The High Window *
Katrina Porteous is that rare, robust perennial bloom, a poet whose lyricism is founded upon clarity of expression and precise attention to the spoken word, whose intellectual sophistication is clothed in simplicity and whose themes are of universal significance, yet rooted in a lifelong commitment to local community and the Northumbrian landscape. -- Mark Cocker (author, naturalist, environmental activist)

About Katrina Porteous

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 Peoples 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). Katrinas 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 NUSTEMs 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 Seas Edge 26 Painted Ladies 27 Speckled Wood 28 Hermeneutics II North Shields 29 Wooden Doll 30 Saat 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 Sellaeld 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

Additional information

Sku

GOR013917585

ISBN 13

9781780377131

ISBN 10

1780377134

Title

Rhizodont by Katrina Porteous

Author

Katrina Porteous

Condition

Used - Like New

Binding type

Paperback

Publisher

Bloodaxe Books Ltd

Year published

2024-06-21

Number of pages

160

Prizes

N/A

Cover note

Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.

Note

The book has been read, but looks new. The book cover has no visible wear, and the dust jacket is included if applicable. No missing or damaged pages, no tears, possible very minimal creasing, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins

Rhizodont Katrina Porteous

Rhizodont by Katrina Porteous

Summary

Rhizodont Summary

Rhizodont by Katrina Porteous

Rhizodont Reviews

About Katrina Porteous

Table of Contents

Additional information

Customer Reviews - Rhizodont