Northumberland poet Katrina Porteous has won the £5,000 Laurel prize for eco-poetry with her collection Rhizodont. She lives on the coast at Beadnell and has worked on many collaborations with scientists and musicians. Her 2024 collection Rhizodont was also shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize.

This year’s award took place at the BBC Contains Strong Language festival in Bradford. Rhizodont, published by Bloodaxe, takes its title from the name of a three-metre-long predatory fish which became extinct 310 million years ago. It belonged to a family of fishes that are the ancestors of all four-limbed vertebrates, including humans. A rhizodont fossil has been found on the Northumberland coast.

Part of the collection is arranged around two long sequences written in collaboration with scientists. The first sequence, ‘Ingenious’, considers the implications of data-based technologies and artificial intelligence. The closing sequence, ‘Under the Ice’, looks at how remote sensing technologies and data analysis can be employed to understand more about Earth’s systems, and in particular its climate, and patterns of change.

The Laurel prize is an annual nature and eco-poetry prize. It is funded by Simon Armitage’s Laureate’s honorarium, which he receives annually from the King, and is run by the Poetry School. It is awarded to what the judges consider the best collection of environmental or nature poetry published in the past year.

Background: We’re all here thanks to the rhizodont