Rhizodont
Rhizodont by Katrina Porteous, published by Bloodaxe Books in 2024, is a poetry collection that explores themes of social and environmental change against the backdrop of geological history. This edition, comprising 159 pages, delves into the ancient landscapes of Northumberland, where the remains of the rhizodont, a prehistoric fish, were discovered. The poems reflect on the transition from coal-mining communities to contemporary issues, intertwining the past with present concerns about fossil fuel consumption and its impact on the environment.
Readers will find a journey that begins in the North-East of England and expands into broader global questions of evolution, survival, and extinction. The collection features sequences that address the latest technological advancements, including autonomous systems and climate monitoring techniques in remote regions like Antarctica. Porteous’s work combines scientific inquiry with ecological awareness, drawing on her previous explorations of local landscapes and communities. Rhizodont presents a thoughtful examination of the interconnectedness of life, history, and the ongoing challenges faced by our planet.
Official synopsis Publisher
Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2024
Against a backdrop of vast geological time and recent fossil-fuel burning history, the poems of Katrina Porteous’s latest collection address current issues of social and environmental change.
330 million years ago what is now the rocky shore close to Katrina
Porteous’s Northumberland home in the north of England 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’.
Porteous’s 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 rhizodont’s 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 Earth’s changing climate.
The poems unfold from England’s North-East coast into global questions
of evolution, survival and extinction – in communities and languages,
and throughout the natural world, where hope resides in Life’s
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.
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