Transitions

Singing Joyfully in North Northumberland

St Paul’s RC Church, Alnwick, NE66 1UW

Sunday 5th May at 7pm

The award-winning Joyful Company of Singers, one of Britain’s leading amateur choirs, is touring North Northumberland this spring. Directed by Peter Broadbent MBE, who formed the choir in 1988, they sing in Wooler on Saturday 4th May and in Alnwick on Sunday 5th May. Their two concerts are related but different, adding Northumbrian flavours to a musical menu of choral works about the sea, voyages of many kinds and life’s transitions.

The choir performs Transitions at St Paul’s RC Church, Alnwick on Sunday 5th May at 7pm. The centrepiece of the concert is Wooler-based composer John Casken’s Uncertain Sea, interleaving two of my poems – one featuring the words of the late Redford Armstrong, an Amble fisherman, in Northumbrian dialect – to evoke the sea and those who brave its dangers.

John Casken says, ‘The powerful sea images of Katrina’s wonderful poems have drawn from me music that I count as some of my most personal.’ But it is not my words but the fishermen’s own which are most moving. If you click HERE, 27 minutes into this talk, you can hear Redford Armstrong’s voice, which I recorded 30 years ago. Here he is in his coble, Rose of Sharon, in the 1980s, in a beautiful photograph by an unknown photographer (please contact me via this site if there are any credit or copyright issues. Thank you).

I will join Joyful Company of Singers in their Alnwick concert to read some new and old work interspersed with the choir’s pieces. This will include poems from my forthcoming Bloodaxe collection, Rhizodont, which explores the deep history of the Northumberland coast, human and natural.

As well as John Casken’s music, other composers include James MacMillan and John Tavener – the choir performs his Song for Athene, which made such an impact at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. On a lighter note, both concerts include choral arrangements of folksongs related to the sea by Vaughan Williams, and Northumbrian folk-song settings by W G Whittaker – Newcastle-born friend and walking companion of Holst and Vaughan Williams – and Derek Hobbs, formerly head of music at Ashington High School and arranger of Singin’ Hinnies.

All are welcome to the Joyful Company of Singers’ concerts.

Full concert details and tickets HERE.

Rhizodont

The ‘rhizodont’, whose name means ‘rooted teeth’, was a fearsome three-metre-long predatory fish which first appeared around 377 million years ago and became extinct 310 million years ago. A creature of swampy lakes, it belonged to a family of lobe-finned fishes which are the ancestors of all four-limbed vertebrates, including humans. The lobe-finned fishes’ transition from water to land was one of the most significant events in vertebrate evolution. A rhizodont’s fossil has been found in Carboniferous strata from around 330 million years ago at Cocklawburn on the Northumberland coast.

Transition is a central theme of Rhizodont, my new poetry collection from Bloodaxe, published on June 27^th. The book is in two parts. The first, ‘Carboniferous’, is a journey through the sedimentary landscapes of England’s North-East coast. The poems begin in the former coal-mining communities of East Durham, where the Carboniferous strata lie buried deep beneath newer rock, and travel north, to the shores of Northumberland just south of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Along the way they explore places and communities in transformation: the mouth of the Tyne, the former coal port of Amble, and the fishing and former quarrying and lime-burning settlements of Beadnell and Holy Island. The poems consider these places against a backdrop of geological time.

Book II, ‘Invisible Everywhere’, is arranged around two long sequences written in collaboration with scientists, and considers aspects of the latest waves of industrial and technological revolution, in particular technologies which extend human senses and reasoning in completely new ways. The first sequence, ‘Ingenious’, explores the remote sensing techniques, robotics and autonomous systems which allow humans to interact with hazardous environments, such as outer space. These poems consider the implications of data-based technologies and artificial intelligence, and the understanding of complex systems, as new ways of thinking about the Earth and its ecology.

The closing sequence, ‘Under the Ice’, focuses on the most inaccessible reaches of our planet, Antarctica, and the unseen worlds beneath its miles-deep ice. These poems explore in detail how the same remote sensing technologies and data analysis are used to understand more about our planet’s systems, in particular its climate, and its patterns of change.

In the background to all the poems in Rhizodont is the notion that the generation born in the decades immediately after World War II occupies a unique place in history, straddling the transition from analogue to digital technologies. Like the lobe-finned fishes, we have crawled from one ‘world’ into another. At different scales the poems in Rhizodont explore these changes, by which – like living creatures – communities, languages and cultures may flourish, evolve or become extinct.

Rhizodont contains work written over the last ten years. You can pre-order it HERE. I’m extremely grateful to all the scientists, naturalists, organisations and individuals who have helped make it possible. With special thanks to editor Neil Astley, cover designer Pamela Robertson-Pearce, and Newcastle-based artist Paul Kenny for his wonderful cover image, ‘Mapping the Strandline – Sea, Metal, Plastic, 2016’.

Spring 24

Laureate’s Library Tour

Tuesday, March 12th 2024

19.00-20.00 – Haltwhistle Library, Mechanics Institute, Westgate, Haltwhistle NE49 0AX

Poet Laureate Simon Armitage embarks on a new leg of his ten-year tour of the UK’s libraries.

Each spring this decade, Simon Armitage will give readings across the UK, from the flagship libraries of the big cities to smaller libraries serving rural and remote communities. Using the alphabet as a compass, his journey will celebrate the library as one of the great and necessary institutions.

The Tour’s grand finale this year celebrates Northumberland Libraries’ centenary and the tenth anniversary of Northumberland National Park as an International Dark Skies Park.

Simon Armitage will read alongside Dr Sheree Mack, the first writer-in-residence at Northumberland National Park. I will also be reading work from my forthcoming Bloodaxe collection, Rhizodont.

Hosted by Northumberland Libraries and Northumberland National Park.

Free but fully-booked. To apply to join the waiting list for tickets (limited numbers) please call Haltwhistle library on 01434 321863 or email haltwhistle.library@northumberland.gov.uk

Age 11+ 

This year’s Laureate’s Library Tour takes place with kind support from the T. S. Eliot Foundation and Faber & Faber.

Morpeth Book Festival

Morpeth Chantry, Morpeth, NE61 1PQ

Saturday 23rd March 2024, 2-3pm

Under the Ice
Beneath Antarctica’s frozen surface lie vast mountains, valleys, lakes and volcanoes. This new audio-visual collaboration between poet, composer and scientists from Northumbria University takes the listener on a journey to an unseen world, exploring its implications for the climate. ‘Under the Ice’ includes a brief introduction for the non-scientist, stunning satellite images, my poetry, and electronic music by Peter Zinovieff. The text will be included in Rhizodont, published by Bloodaxe Books in June.

Age guidance: over 12 years.

Ticket price £7 online (+ booking fee)

Coming in May…

Transitions

St Paul’s RC Church,  

Percy Street, Alnwick, NE66 1UW

Sunday 5th May 2024, 7-9pm

The Joyful Company of Singers is one of Britain’s leading amateur chamber choirs – committed to performing a wide and challenging repertoire of choral works from the 16th to 21st centuries. Their conductor is Peter Broadbent. They are currently putting the final touches to plans for their tour of North Northumberland in May 2024, with two main performances:

‘Far from Land’ at St Mary’s Church, Wooler on Saturday 4th May at 7.30pm.

‘Transitions’ at St Paul’s RC Church, Alnwick on Sunday 5th May at 7pm.

‘Transitions’ includes choral works reflecting life’s transitions and voyages of all kinds.

The centrepiece of both concerts is John Casken’s ‘Uncertain Sea’, a setting which interleaves two of my poems from The Lost Music:

‘A vivid and atmospheric evocation of the sea and those who earn their living in its dangerous environment.’

I will join JCS in Alnwick to read some poems between their choral items.

More details to follow soon…

Tickets for ‘Transitions’ are on sale online. 

Standard Admission: Online* £15/On the door £18

Concessions – Adult: Online* £8/On the door £10 

                          – Youth U30: £5

                          – Child U12: FREE

*Online booking fees apply

Cobles

THE ESSAY

BBC Radio 3, week beginning January 29^th 2024

10.45pm

A Circumnavigation of the British Isles in Five Traditional Boats

Produced by Julian May.

Every night this week, The Essay will feature a different writer, considering a traditional wooden boat from their part of the British Isles.

John Ruskin said the bow of a wooden boat is ‘the pinnacle of Man’s achievement’. He appreciated that some of our most beautiful and effective creations are not designed as such but evolve to fulfil their task in their place, according to the history and affections of the people who use them. Some are scarcely noticed – overlooked because historians tend to concentrate on the built environment rather than on more ephemeral structures like boats, built to do jobs. In this series of The Essay five writers, each personally involved with their craft, circumnavigate the British Isles in five traditional boats – without leaving home.

They include:

The Cornish and Isles of Scilly Pilot Gig (Anna Maria Murphy, 29.1.1.24)

The Irish Curach (Keith Payne, 30.1.24)

Shetland Whillies, Yoals and Sixerns (Brian Wishart, 31.1.24)

The Coble (Katrina Porteous, 1.2.24)

The Essex Smack (Malcolm ‘Mac’ MacGregor, 2.2.24)

All five essays will be available after broadcast on BBC Sounds, HERE.

My essay on the Coble, Thursday 1^st February, features a trip I made from Beadnell on the Douglases’ Golden Gate II in the mid 1990s. The poem excerpts are from my dialect poem, The Wund an’ the Wetter, with Northumbrian pipe music by Chris Ormston. An excerpt from The Wund an’ the Wetter is available HERE.

The full poem is available on the eBook version of Two Countries with audio, HERE.

The Coble ‘Golden Gate’ leaves Beadnell Harbour, 1993 (photo K.Porteous)

You can read more on my work with the Northumbrian coble fishing community in North East History vol 37 (2006) pp68-87 HERE

and in my book The Bonny Fisher Lad (2003) HERE.

For more information about Northumbrian and Yorkshire Cobles and the maritime history of NE England, please visit the Coble and Keelboat Society, HERE.

Ancestors

On a personal note, I’ve often wondered where my lifelong fascination with coble fishing originated. I don’t have any immediate family links. My grandfather on my mother’s side was a Durham pitman and on my father’s a Newcastle G.P.

Thanks to a relative’s family research, however, I recently discovered that my Mother’s Great Great Grandfather was Launcelot Burn, a well-known pilot on the River Tyne. He, alongside others, would have used his coble to guide shipping into the river. He was also Coxswain of the Tyne lifeboat, Providence and, together with 19 crew, lost his life in an infamous disaster in 1849 when Providence capsized during a rescue. He left a widow and two children, one of whom, Martha, was my Great Great Grandmother. It is interesting to reflect on research which shows that trauma can leave a chemical (‘epigenetic’) mark on a person’s genes, which can be passed down to future generations.

Here’s picture of me with the painting The Wreck off the South Pier by John Scott in South Shields Museum, showing the lifeboat Providence, which continued to serve after 1849. Chairman of the Coble and Keelboat Society, David Sells, who took the photo, gave us a guided tour of the Museum at the last Society AGM.

The Last Fishermen

Tuesday February 13^th 2024

Belford Community Cinema presents:

THE LAST FISHERMEN

The End of the Line for An Ancient Maritime Tradition

With speaker Katrina Porteous

UPSTAIRS at Bell View, 33 West Street, Belford NE70 7QB

Doors 6.30pm/7pm start.

Running Time 56mins + Q and A. Tickets: £4 on the Door.

A century ago every port on the coast of North East had its own fleet of cobles. Fishermen braved stormy seas to bring back the daily catch in these tiny wooden boats, whose design goes back hundreds of years. But now more cobles are being destroyed than are being built, and a unique way of life has all but vanished.

Charles Bowden’s film ‘The Last Fishermen’ (made in 2003) tells the story of the coble and features the handful of men who were still using the boat for fishing at that time. At Boulmer, Main Stephenson’s Northern Pride was one of just three still based at the village. In summer he cast his nets close to the beach, hoping to catch sea trout in the way his forefathers did. In winter he went potting for lobsters and crabs. The decline in coble fishing had hit boat-building too, but in a small shed in Whitby master boat-builders were making the first to be built on the coast for 15 years. It was perhaps one of the last.

I’ll introduce Charles Bowden’s film, which includes the bonus short, ‘Sea of Stories’, featuring my own film shot in Beadnell in the 1990s. There will be a discussion after the film, and we hope to give a glimpse of a world that has almost disappeared forever.

Catch a taster of Main Stephenson in ‘The Last Fishermen’ HERE.

You can still buy copies of Charles Bowden’s ‘The Last Fishermen’ (inc. ‘Sea of Stories’ with my film) on DVD HERE.

The earlier Golden Gate, with John Percy Douglas, c1920

(photo: Catherine Petty)

Salmon netting from cobles on the Northumberland coast, as shown in The Last Fishermen, has now been banned. You can read about that in my essay, Naen Skyells, in Wild Fish 2021, HERE.

You might also enjoy my poem Plenty Lang a Winter, near the end of this short film by GRUB productions for Food and Drink North East, HERE.

Lastly, I’m wishing a very Happy New Year to everyone who has found their way to this site.

The Refuge Box

Earlier this year, English Heritage opened its new museum on Lindisfarne. As part of the permanent exhibition, Olivia Lomenech Gill and I were invited to collaborate on an installation which includes a brand new version of my audio poem, The Refuge Box, produced by Julian May, and a marvellous new large-scale mixed media work by Olivia, called Shifting Sands. The Refuge Box uses the idea of a shelter on the causeway, designed to save motorists from the rising tide, as a metaphor for the sanctuary which the Island itself provides for people and wildlife, and to explore wider ideas of sanctuary and refuge. It includes the voices of Islanders, of the birds and seals with whom they share their home, and of a refugee from West Africa.

You can scan a QR code to listen to the new recording of The Refuge Box as you wander through Lindisfarne Priory ruins, or listen to a short version while immersed in Olivia’s fabulous artwork in the museum itself.

Olivia has also produced a family trail illustrating six birds and beasts inspired by the animal artistry of the Lindisfarne Gospels. I wrote a short riddle to accompany them. Olivia’s illustrations are on display in the museum and the trail riddle is available as a leaflet.

For museum opening times, please see HERE.

Please also consult the safe crossing times for the Island HERE.

Shifting Sands by Olivia Lomenech Gill, Lindisfarne Priory Museum (Credit English Heritage)

The Yoto Carnegies Robert Westall Lecture with Olivia Lomenech Gill

Youth Libraries Group

Monday 6^th November 2023
19:00-20:00 GMT

On Monday 6^th November Olivia will be giving an online talk about her work. She has collaborated with many well known writers, including Michael Morpurgo, and is the illustrator of J. K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. At this event she will talk about her work on Lindisfarne and quote from The Refuge Box.

The event is free to attend. Please sign up HERE.

If you are unable to join Olivia live, the recording will be circulated afterwards.

You can listen to the original version of The Refuge Box, produced by Julian May and first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2007, HERE until November 28^th.

The full text of The Refuge Box is published in Two Countries (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), available HERE.

The Refuge Box, original etching by Olivia Lomenech Gill

IRON

IRON Press 50 @ 50

Twelve hours of poetry to mark a continuous half century of publishing from IRON Press

Sunday, October 29^th 2023

The Watch House, Cullercoats, NE30 4QB

8.00 am – 8.00 pm

Free, with regular musical interludes and refreshments.

IRON Press, creation of the brilliantly original poet, playwright and publisher Peter Mortimer, has been part of the literary landscape of the North East all my life. It was set up when Pete was living in the attic of Tom and Connie Pickard’s house in Gateshead in 1973. Tom and Connie were founders of the now legendary Morden Tower poetry readings, and Tom will be among the poets reading at this event. IRON has been based in Cullercoats since 1975, and Pete’s terraced house near the Metro Station is a well-known colourful landmark, from which IRON has published countless poets, and several major anthologies. These include The Poetry of Perestroika, said to be the only collection of verse from Russia published in the West in the time of Glasnost, and Voices of Conscience, a global collection of poems from 20^th century writers persecuted, imprisoned or even executed by the state.

When I was at school in the 1970s, the slightly subversive, somewhat anarchic IRON magazine, together with Jon Silkin’s Stand and the Pickards’ Morden Tower, were the height of literary aspiration. Years later, my first poetry residency, in Amble schools in 1990, was alongside Pete himself. Pete and his account of life on the North Shields fishing trawlers, The Last of the Hunters, were part of the initial inspiration for my own lifelong interest in inshore fishing. In 1999 IRON Press commissioned me to write words to be performed alongside new music by Northumbrian piper Chris Ormston at the launch of The Northumborman, the collected dialect poems of Fred Reed. The result was my own long dialect fishing poem, The Wund an’ the Wetter, which IRON Press subsequently published in collaboration with the Northumbrian Language Society.

It will be a particular honour to perform an excerpt from The Wund an’ the Wetter on Sunday, as the event takes place in Cullercoats Watch House. Built in 1879 to house the Cullercoats Volunteer Life Brigade, the Watch House served as a fishermen’s lookout, and features in many late 19^th century paintings by the Cullercoats artists who depicted the fishing community, among them Winslow Homer. It is now a community centre, and is currently fundraising for much needed repairs.

Fifty poets and writers will take part in Sunday’s celebration of IRON Press, including Kate Fox, Linda France, John Hegley, Pippa Little, Harry Gallagher, David Almond and Kitty Fitzgerald. We each have a 10-minute slot to read. We’ve all been published by IRON, either in individual books, as part of the press’s many anthologies, or in IRON Magazine, which ran for 73 editions from 1973 through to 1997.

I’ll be performing in the 18.00 – 19.00 slot, which also features John Price and work by Valerie Laws. Although I also have work in the IRON anthologies 100 Island Poems, North by North-East and The IRON Book of Tree Poems, most of my 10 minutes will be excerpts from The Wund an’ the Wetter, in memory of the fishing families who congregated at the Watch House, spoke that language, and lived that precarious life among cobles and creeves.

As a link to that life, The Coble and Keelboat Society (CKS) has for over 30 years been researching and preserving the history of the ‘Coble Coast’ from the River Tweed to the Humber. CKS members are fishermen, authors, poets, artists, model makers and maritime historians amongst others who have wide interest in the maritime heritage of the North East and Yorkshire Coast. Individual members own sailing and motor cobles and other working craft. I have the great honour of being President of the CKS.

The Society’s AGM takes place this Saturday from 1pm in South Shields Museum, which is home to William Wouldhave’s  1789 Lifeboat model and some of the earliest self-righting lifeboat designs. Close to the Museum on Ocean Road is the Tyne Lifeboat Memorial, dedicated to designers William Wouldhave and Henry Greathead.  This memorial also records the fate of the Lifeboat Providence, which overturned in a storm on 4^th December 1849 while trying to rescue the crew of the brig Betsy which had run aground on the Herd Sand. Twenty of the twenty-four pilots manning the lifeboat were drowned, among them the Coxswain, Launcelot Burn, who was my Great-Great-Great Grandfather on my Mother’s side. Launcelot’s sister, Martha Marshall, lost her husband, two brothers and her nephew in that disaster. I shall remember them at the CKS Meeting on Saturday, and as I read from The Wund an’ the Wetter on Sunday.

 More details about Sunday’s IRON Press 50 @ 50 event can be found on the IRON Press website, HERE.

Cullercoats Watch House

A Curlew Flings its Loop of Sound

Over the summer the poet Rowan Bell travelled to Amble on the Northumberland coast to talk to me about fishing, survival and extinction for the excellent online magazine The Friday Poem. This was in the context of my fourth Bloodaxe collection, Rhizodont, due out in June next year. You can read the interview, ‘A Curlew Flings its Loop of Sound’, in The Friday Poem, HERE.

With my first book and its inspiration, May Douglas (right), some Beadnell fishermen, and their family, 1990. Photo: The Berwick Advertiser.

More about Rhizodont HERE. The Rhizodont itself was a huge, predatory lobe-finned fish, which lived more than 350 million years ago. Its fossil has been found at Cocklawburn, near Berwick. From such creatures all four-limbed creatures, including humans, are descended.

The glorious cover image is by Paul Kenny, who writes of his work: ‘building on themes developed over fifty years, [it] tries to find the awe-inspiring in that which is easily passed by. It contains issues of fragility, beauty and transience in the landscape: marks and scars left by man and the potential threat to the few remaining areas of wilderness. Looking at the micro and thinking about the macro, I aim for each print to be a beautiful, irresistible, thought provoking object.’  From that description, you can probably tell why I was so delighted that he allowed me to use his work for the cover of my own.

This particular cover image, Paul writes, was ‘made with sixteen selectively cut fragments of plastic Seven-Up bottles found over three years on beaches in the west of Ireland. Suspect they all came on the Gulf Stream from the east coast of USA or Canada…The rust staining was made from a large washer found on the beach at Belderg in Mayo. Seawater collected at Belderg was seeped under for about two months.’ 

More of Paul Kenny’s work HERE.

Under the Ice

at Berwick Literary Festival

Saturday, October 14^th, 10-11am

Berwick Baptist Church

8 Golden Square

Berwick-upon-Tweed TD15 1BG

£8

Age recommendation 12+

Beneath Antarctica’s frozen surface lie vast mountains, valleys, lakes and volcanoes. This audio-visual collaboration between poet, composer and scientists from Northumbria University takes the listener on a journey to an unseen world, exploring its implications for the climate.

Written during lockdown in 2020-21, this piece premiered online for the Wordsworth Trust. This is only its second live performance.

Under the Ice includes a brief introduction for the non-scientist, stunning satellite images, my poetry and astonishing electronic music by the late Peter Zinovieff.

Tickets available HERE.

Full programme for Berwick Literary Festival HERE.

Northumbrian Wordhoard

Saturday October 14^th, from 1pm

Morpeth Town Hall

NE61 1LZ

The Northumbrian Language Society, of which I’ve been President since 2008, has just published its definitive dictionary. This lovely, friendly volume contains the basic 140 words needed to get by in Northumbrian today, together with a more comprehensive dictionary, Northumbrian to English and English to Northumbrian. If you are new to the area and want to find out what we are all talking about, or a native who just wants to refresh their vocabulary, this is the book for you.

It costs £10 and is available HERE.

A launch event for Northumbrian Wordhoard, with Ian Lavery MP, will precede this year’s Roland Bibby Memorial Lecture in Morpeth Town Hall on Saturday 14^th October from 1pm.

This year’s lecture, Aroond the Rugged Rock: a songwriter’s journey through the cornfields and coalfields of Northumberland, is presented at 2pm by Graham Bell. Entry Free, donations welcome.

Farewell, New Networks for Nature

Lastly, I’d like to say a huge and heartfelt Thank You to all my friends at New Networks for Nature, which has very sadly come to the end its life. New Networks was launched in 2009, and thanks to founder member Mark Cocker, who introduced me to it, I’ve attended every ‘live’ meeting since 2010, most of those in the role of ‘Ambassador’. The name stood for ‘a broad alliance of creators, including poets, authors, scientists, film makers, visual artists, environmentalists, musicians and composers, whose work draws strongly on the natural environment.’ Its annual meetings ‘grew out of dissatisfaction with the low political priority placed upon nature in the UK.’ Wildlife and landscapes are often evaluated exclusively in economic or scientific terms when, in fact, they are a resource at the very heart of human creativity. New Networks for Nature proposed that the natural world is absolutely central to our cultural life, and all its activities sprung from that conviction.

Jeremy Mynott describes its history HERE.

I’m extremely grateful to all the New Networks Trustees, Steering Group and fellow Ambassadors for the enormous amount of work they have done over many years. They have indeed changed the intellectual landscape, making countless connections between artists and scientists, bringing the ecological conversation into the mainstream, and providing a model for others to take forward to a new generation. This is truly important work.

I feel extremely fortunate to have been associated with New Networks over this period. I found the conversations I had at those meetings life-affirming and confidence-boosting. I made many new friends, including the fabulous artists Harriet Mead and Carry Akroyd, poets Ruth Padel and Matt Howard, scientists Tim Birkhead, Mike Toms and John Fanshawe, singer Sam Lee, writers Mary Colwell, Jeremy Mynott, Mike McCarthy, Jonathan Elphick, Derek Neimann and Amy-Jane Beer – and too many more to mention. I’ll always think of my friends there as a kind of family.

Thank you, Mark Cocker.

Thank you, one and all.

Sawblade Goby, by Harriet Mead. Welded collage of found metal objects.

Whin Lands

Night Choir

Sage One, Sage Gateshead

Saturday 22^nd July 2023, 10.15pm

Kristina Arakelyan’s new commission Whin Lands premieres at the BBC Proms from Sage Gateshead this Saturday, July 22^nd. Kristina’s piece for three choirs is inspired by some of my poetry from Two Countries. It’s in three movements: ‘Nightfall’, ‘Round the Dancing Flames’ and ‘Daybreak’. These form the beginning, middle and end of the hour-long concert, which includes a very diverse range of choral pieces. The first two movements of Kristina’s piece set words from ‘This Far and No Further’ about Hadrian’s Wall, and ‘Daybreak’ sets words from ‘The Refuge Box’ about Holy Island sand-flats.

This series of BBC Proms concerts broadcast from Sage Gateshead will be the first ever weekend-long Proms festival rooted in the North-East, away from London and the Royal Albert Hall. Armenia-born Kristina Arakelyan is based in London and is described by BBC Music magazine as ‘a rising star’. She has worked previously with Northern Sinfonia. I was thrilled when she contacted me, asking to set some of my words for her new commission, and I very much hope that this will lead us to further collaboration.

Whin Lands evokes night-time across North-Eastern landscapes linked geologically by the Whin Sill, the dramatic igneous rock that outcrops at Hadrian’s Wall and Holy Island. ‘Nightfall’, which begins the concert, and ‘Round the Dancing Flames’ in the middle, include distinctive local pronunciation of place names such as ‘Cuddy’s Craig’ and ‘Hoosesteeds’ – a truly Northumbrian sound for the three choirs. For anyone new to my work, the Northumbrian language is a particular interest of mine and I’m honoured to be President of the Northumbrian Language Society.

At the end of the concert, as day breaks on the sand-flats stretching towards Holy Island where the Whin Sill meets the sea, the power of those three choirs singing together promises to sound truly transcendental.

You can read more about the choirs and some of the individual singers in David Whetstone’s essay for Cultured. North East HERE.

The concert, conducted by Tim Burke and Grace Rossiter, is called Night Choir and takes place at 10.15pm in Sage One on Saturday 22^nd July. It will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and available afterwards on BBC Sounds. More information HERE.

‘This Far and No Further’ was originally written as a radio-poem for BBC Radio 4, and ‘The Refuge Box’ for ‘Between the Ears’ on BBC Radio 3. The full text of both works is published in Two Countries (Bloodaxe Books, 2014).

Hadrian’s Wall on the Whin Sill – inspiration for my words used in Whin Lands.
(Photo Michael Hanselmann, Creative Commons).

Salford Sound

Salford Sound Symposium 2

Friday, 30^th June 2023 09:30 – 17:00 BST

University of Salford – MediaCityUK, Orange Tower, MediaCity, Salford Quays, Salford, M50 2HE

Please join us for a second sound symposium based at MediaCityUK, Salford. This interdisciplinary event features a range of speakers and practitioners working across film, TV, radio, music, games and installations. The symposium will include live performance and demonstrations of practice-research.

Theory, practice, production, composition, collaboration, and innovation all combined in one unmissable event.

Speakers include: Paul Farrer, Sara Parker, Adam Hart, Alan Williams, Brona Martin, Billy Glew, Naomi Kashiwagi, Giorgio Carlino, Danny Saul, Adam Fowler and Katrina Porteous.

Sign up HERE.

I’ll be speaking about some of my radio-poetry from the last 23 years, including Dunstanburgh, Beach Ride and The Refuge Box (all produced for the BBC by Julian May). The text for those works can be found in my collection Two Countries (Bloodaxe Books 2014). Audio versions of the poems are available as part of the eBook, available from Bloodaxe Books or on Amazon.

You can hear Beach Ride HERE.

I’ll also talk with independent producer Adam Fowler about work we have made together, including Borderers (also in Two Countries), Late Blackbird, Conversations on a Bench and the Inventive podcast.

An essay about Late Blackbird, together with a transcript, is published in Songs of Place and Time (Gaia Project 2021), available HERE.

An excerpt from the Conversations programme is available HERE.

You can listen to the Inventive podcast with Adam’s amazing sound design HERE.

Conversations on a Bench was recorded at Beadnell harbour, Northumberland, in 2016.

The Bench is on the bank above the boat. Photo K. Porteous.

I’ll also talk briefly about my work with inventor and electronic composer Peter Zinovieff (1933-2021).

Peter ran the legendary EMS studio, and used a computer to compose live on stage as early as 1968.

Between 2011 and 2021 we made five performance pieces together for computer and live voice, three of them in surround sound for a Planetarium.

1. Horse (about a 3,000 year old chalk figure). Listen HERE.

Also available HERE as an artist’s book and CD, with prints by Olivia Lomenech Gill

• Edge (Moons of the solar system; music created from sounds from space missions)
• Field (Field Theory and the Higgs Mechanism)
• Sun (Solar physics, including sound used to ‘see’ inside Sun; music created from solar data). Watch HERE.

• Under the Ice (Remote sensing techniques in Antarctica; music created from sounds from Antarctic glaciers). More information HERE.

All five pieces are available for live performance. Please contact me via this site for more information.

Borderers (Adam Fowler and Katrina Porteous) was recorded

on the Scottish-English Border in 2002. Photo K. Porteous.

BBC Proms

Saturday 22^nd July 2023, 22.15pm

Sage, Gateshead, NE8 2JR

BBC Proms at Sage Gateshead: Night Choir

Journey from dusk to dawn with Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia, Voices of the River’s Edge and massed voices of the North East. Classical and contemporary choral music explores our experiences of night-time – our thoughts, feelings, and dreams as the clock ticks from evening to midnight to morning. 

The beginning, middle and end of this BBC Prom feature a brand-new choral commission in three movements, Whin Lands by Kristina Arakelyan. The first two movements take inspiration from night falling across the wild, windswept landscape of Hadrian’s Wall in my poem This Far and No Further. The third movement is inspired by lines from The Refuge Box, set on Holy Island causeway. The Holy Island landscape is linked to that of Hadrian’s Wall geologically: its outcrops of basalt are part of the Whin Sill, hence the title.

Both the texts which Kristina has set were originally radio-poems and can be found in my collection Two Countries (Bloodaxe Books 2014).

Tim Burke conductor
Grace Rossiter conductor
Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia
Voices of the River’s Edge
Massed voices of the North East

More information and tickets HERE.

Spring News

The Lapwing Act

In his marvellous book, In Search of One Last Song, Patrick Galbraith travels around Britain in search of disappearing birds such as the capercaillie, lapwing, nightingale and turtle dove. Rather than consulting university-educated scientists, Patrick listens to the people he meets along the way: reed-cutters, coppicers, hedge-layers, crofters and deer-stalkers, whose traditional work or craft has always involved conservation, but whose voices usually go unheard, and whose way of life is often as threatened as the birds themselves.

I was very privileged to meet Patrick on his travels and to be one of his interviewees. Now a chapter from In Search of One Last Song has been adapted for the London stage. The Lapwing Act is co-edited by Eloïse Poulton and Patrick himself, and staged by Anthony Biggs. Including video design by Matt Feldman, sculptures created by Jack Anthony Taylor, and improvised sound design by Dom Bouffard, it promises to ‘fly audiences through time and place from Rochdale to West Wales, via canals, motorway flyovers, and the Manchester Mosses.’

Each night after the performance Patrick will be ‘in conversation’ with other writers, including Tom Pickard and Emily Oldfield (May 10), Noreen Masood (May 11), and me and Richard Smyth (The Jay, the Beech and the Limpetshell — May 12).

The Lapwing Act is on at The Playground Theatre, 8 Latimer Industrial Estate, 343 – 453 Latimer Road, London W10 6RQ, from May 10-12 at 7.30pm.

Patrick Galbraith in Conversation with Richard Smyth and Katrina Porteous, May 12. Tickets £15 and £10.

It will be a great evening. Please come if you can. You can book HERE.

Under the Ice

My final collaboration with the late Peter Zinovieff had its long-delayed in-person premiere at the Gallery @ No 6 in Wooler on Saturday night. The event was organised by Wooler Arts, at the invitation of composer John Casken, who controlled the mix of my voice with Peter’s electronic music. The sound quality was excellent, and the audience of about 25 very appreciative. Greg Freeman has written a lovely review of the event for Write Out Loud, which you can read HERE.

Performing ‘Under the Ice’. Photo by Greg Freeman, Write Out Loud

The Bird Roads

Amble Bord Waalk sculpture trail will officially open to the public in June with a visit from a member of the Royal Family. You can read the latest news about The Bird Roads, my collaboration with sound artist Geoff Sample, on page 19 of The Ambler, HERE.

On Sunday May 28 I’ll be performing poems from The Bird Roads in Amble as part of the Puffin Festival. Time and venue to be confirmed. Click HERE for details soon.

After Hours with the Artists, Tuesday May 30, 5-6.30pm, Lindisfarne Priory Museum

In 2022 English Heritage commissioned me and producer Julian May to create a new version of our radio-poem The Refuge Box for the brand new Museum at Lindisfarne Priory. The Museum opened to the public a few weeks ago, and you can hear our 13-minute audio installation in a specially-designed space inside it. You can also download the full 30 minute version from a QR code available there. The poem focuses on the refuge intended for travellers caught by the tide while crossing the sands to Holy Island. It features local voices, and considers the Island itself as a sanctuary, together with wider ideas of refuge and migration. The installation is intended to be heard alongside a major new artwork by Olivia Lomenech Gill, which hangs in the Museum next to the listening space. Here it is:

Olivia Lomenech Gill’s new work for the Lindisfarne Priory Museum

On May 30, you can join Olivia and me in conversation with Susan Harrison (Collections Curator) and Ruth Haycock (Interpretation Manager) as we discuss our work, the commission as part of the new museum experience, and our shared love for the island. The in-conversation event will be followed by a short Q&A session.

Tickets cost £15 and include entry to the Museum. You can book HERE.

A book signing will also take place between 3pm and 4pm at the Priory. Olivia and I will be signing copies of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Bloomsbury Children’s Books) and Two Countries (Bloodaxe Books). Pre-booking is not required.

Chris Killip

On Wednesday April 12 I talked live to Nick Ahad on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row about the wonderful retrospective exhibition of photographs by Chris Killip at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle, which continues until September 3. Chris’s powerful, tender black and white images featuring sea-coalers, small boat fishermen and street scenes around Wallsend, Tyneside and Middlesbrough had a profound impact on me at an early stage of my writing life in the late 1970s and early 80s.

Killip took great care to embed himself within the communities with whom he worked, remaining friends with many of the people and families he photographed. Recognised as a leading postwar documentary photographer, he died in October 2020. Before my visit to the BBC’s Newcastle studio I spent a very happy afternoon at Baltic, immersed in this retrospective, which begins with work from Chris’s native Isle of Man, then concentrates on his time in Northeast England, a period which ended with his influential collection, In Flagrante. I marvelled in particular at the contrasting formality and spontaneity of Chris’s photographs: the careful geometric arrangements of landscape, building and horizon, dark and light, and the exuberant human energy of people at work or passing through.

I grew up on the edge of Consett, a steel town; so Chris’s image of two small girls sharing confidences on the kerbside in the shadow of Middlesbrough’s steelworks reminded me strongly of those red dust days. I heard many visitors to the exhibition make similar personal observations: ‘Eeh, that’s where your Granda worked!’ In my discussion with Nick I reflect on this; on Chris Killip’s self-accusation of ‘voyeurism’ and his strenuous efforts to avoid it by winning people’s trust and demonstrating his care and commitment to them. I consider how he makes the invisible values of community and belonging so visible in his photographs, and reflect on the love which imbues his work. I could have said a great deal more about how much has changed since that historical era of pit heaps, coal smoke skies and ‘deindustrialisation’ — and in terms of economic inequality and unheard voices, how little.

Incidentally, I first discovered Chris Killip’s work in the late 1970s at Newcastle’s Side Gallery, which Chris helped to found with Murray Martin’s influential Amber Collective. I am very sorry, therefore, to hear of its recent closure. The Side Gallery has done so much over decades to bring attention to unheard voices, nationally and internationally. I wish that I’d been able to mention this in the interview.

You can hear my thoughts on the Chris Killip retrospective at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art towards the end of Front Row, Wednesday April 12, HERE (from 31.50). Also on the programme, Max Porter discusses his new novel, Shy; opera director Adele Thomas reflects on what a stage director earns, and Kevin Sampson talks about his new true crime drama, The Hunt for Raoul Moat. The programme was produced by Ekene Akalawu.

Photos by Chris Killip, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, until September 2023

Antarctic Poetry

Under the Ice

A performance for live voice and computer, words by Katrina Porteous, music by Peter Zinovieff

Saturday April 15^th, 7.30pm

Gallery @ no. 6, High Street, Wooler, Northumberland, NE71 6BY

Admission £10 on door

Beneath Antarctica’s frozen surface lie vast mountains, valleys, lakes and volcanoes, landscapes more difficult to visit than outer space. ‘Under the Ice’, my 30-minute poetry performance with electronic music by Peter Zinovieff, is a collaboration between poet, composer and scientists from Northumbria University’s Cold and Palaeo-Environments team, which takes the listener on a journey to this unseen world.

Intended for the non-scientist, ‘Under the Ice’ explores the Northumbria University science team’s cutting-edge research: the ‘remote sensing’ techniques used to investigate this secret landscape and to discern the movement of glaciers – in particular Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier, crucial to the understanding of climate change.

Scientists studying glaciers observe Earth’s smallest and largest phenomena: microscopic clues in the bedrock provide evidence of the glacier’s advance and retreat over vast timescales; air bubbles in ice cores reveal the composition of the atmosphere over hundreds of thousands of years; radar and satellite data supply information about the dynamics of the glacier and the ice sheet which feeds it. ‘Under the Ice’ was written as part of NUSTEM’s ‘Exploring Extreme Environments’ project, a cross-curricular arts and sciences educational project funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council. I will give a short talk to introduce the piece, and will be happy to answer questions about it afterwards.

On a personal note, Peter Zinovieff died on June 23^rd 2021 at the age of 88. ‘Under the Ice’, our fifth major collaboration, premiered online on the evening of his death, as part of the Wordsworth Trust’s ‘Go to the Poets’ series. It will always be particularly significant to me for its timing, and it is a privilege to perform it live for the first time at the Gallery @ no. 6.

You can read more about ‘Under the Ice’ in the June 2021 ‘Archive’ section of this website.