Christmas Spirit
Ten Poems to Warm the Heart
The latest collection from the lovely Candlestick Press ‘Instead of a Card’ series. Seasonal poems specially commissioned from ten leading poets, with a beautiful cover by Louise Slater. Includes my new poem from Northumberland, The Mizzletow.
£4-95 from Candlestick Press HERE
The People’s Landscape: Poems from the Durham Coast
Earlier this year, together with poet Phoebe Power, I undertook a short writing residency on the Durham Coast as part of the National Trust People’s Landscape project. The residency was supported by New Writing North for the Durham Book Festival. You can read the resulting poems HERE.
You can also read a blog post I wrote about the residency HERE.
EVENTS
Words Weekend 2019
Sage Gateshead, Barbour Room, Sunday Dec 8th, 11am
Poems from the Edge of Extinction
With Chris McCabe
A recent report states that dialects will disappear over the next 50 years. With this in mind, join three UK poets who write in the language of their region. Hosted by Chris McCabe, editor of Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry In Endangered Languages, who will also read poems in his native Scouse tongue. I’ll read from my work in Northumbrian dialect, and Scots poet Peter McCarey will presents poems from The Syllabary, his ongoing project to write a poem for every syllable in the English language. You’ll have the chance to ask us questions about our work in a discussion focused around poetry in dialect and what the art form can do to activate engagement with language.
An Evening with Two Poets: Katrina Porteous and Don Paterson
Barter Books, Alnwick
Monday, Dec 9th, 7.30pm
Tickets £10 – please book in advance 01665 604999
Don Paterson is one of our great poets. Born in Dundee, Scotland, he is Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews, and since 1996 has been poetry editor at Picador MacMillan. He is the author of seven books of poetry, including Selected Poems and 40 Sonnets (both from Faber). An eighth, Zonal, is eagerly-awaited and will be published in March 2020. Paterson has won many awards, including the Whitbread/Costa Poetry Prize, the T S Eliot Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, all three Forward Prizes, and a Cholmondeley Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the English Association, and The Royal Society of Edinburgh. He received the OBE in 2008 and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010. As if all this weren’t enough, he also works as a guitarist and composer.
I’ll be reading from my brand new Bloodaxe collection, Edge. This contains three poem sequences which extend my previous work on nature, place and time beyond the human sphere to the macro workings of our local star, the potential for primitive life elsewhere in the solar system, and finally to the development of complex consciousness on our own planet. All three pieces were written in collaboration with research scientists for performance in the Life Science Centre Planetarium, Newcastle, with real space photographs and electronic music by Peter Zinovieff. In this event I’ll perform and discuss a stripped-down excerpt from each piece.
A Selection of Recent Anthologies in which I have poems
Click on the titles below for details and orders
The Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry, ed. Anne Caldwell and Oz Hardwick, £10-99 +p&p
Planet in Peril, an anthology for our time, ed. Isabelle Kenyon, fly on the wall press, £15-19 +p&p
Tyne Anew, celebrating public art in North Tyneside, ed Keith Armstrong and Peter Dixon, £9 +p&p
Spring of the Muses, poetry of music, art and dance, ed. Deborah Gaye, Avalanche Books, £9-95 +p&p
Further Than it Looks, poems about mountains, ed. Joy Howard, Grey Hen, £5 + p&p
