Katrina Porteous Beadnell Archive

Most of the collection is focussed on the published work of Katrina Porteous, including copies of her printed work and some drafts, and recordings of broadcast material. There is material on Beadnell, notably the quarterly reports of the Fishery Officer between 1925 and 1952, in addition to her books on the village.

Katrina Porteous is a poet, historian and broadcaster. Her particular interests include the inshore fishing community of the Northumberland coast, and the cultural and natural history of that area.

Katrina was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and grew up in County Durham. She graduated from Trinity Hall, Cambridge, with a double first in History in 1982, studied at Berkeley and Harvard Universities in the USA on a Harkness Fellowship, and has lived in her grandparents’ house on the Northumberland coast, working as a freelance writer, since 1987. Her poetry has won many national awards, including a Gregory Award (1989), an Arts Council Writer’s Bursary (1993) and an Arts Foundation Award (2003).

As well as poetry in English, she occasionally writes in Northumbrian dialect. In 1999 she accompanied two Northumbrian shepherd-poets to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Nevada, U.S.A. Katrina’s first major collection, The lost music (Bloodaxe 1996), concentrated on the Northumbrian fishing community. She has also explored this subject in prose in Beadnell - a history in photographs (Northumberland County Library 1990), Beadnell Harbour 200th anniversary (Harbour in Trouble 1998) and The bonny fisher lad (People's History 2003). Katrina’s other publications include a long dialect poem, The wund an’ the wetter (with piper Chris Ormston, Iron Press 1999), Turning the tide, a collaboration with two artists on the Durham coast (Easington 2001), Dunstanburgh (Smokestack 2004) and Longshore drift (with artist James Dodds, Jardine Press 2005). Her work is regularly featured on the radio, including several pieces commissioned for the medium which have explored the full potential of sound and voice, such as The refuge box (2007), Horse (2011), and Edge (2012). Katrina’s poetry is also included in many anthologies, most recently Tweed Rivers, new writing and art inspired by the rivers of the Tweed catchment, edited by Ken Cockburn and James Carter (Luath Press and platform projects, 2005). Katrina’s three-part poem about the River Tweed is accompanied by photographs by Susheila Jamieson. Katrina Porteous is President of the Northumbrian Language Society.

Her website is: http://katrinaporteous.co.uk/

Open for consultation.

The collection was given to the Library in 2012 by the author (Accession Misc.2011/12:44; 2012/13:43).

Catalogue

Permission to make any published use of material from the collection must be sought in advance from the Sub-Librarian, Special Collections (e-mail PG.Library@durham.ac.uk) and, where appropriate, from the copyright owner. The Library will assist where possible with identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material.

Further additions to the collection are hoped for.