What the Arctic Blew In

It's hard to believe that Christmas has come around so quickly - let alone that 2011 is rushing upon us! So it's time for Susan and I to wish you all a New Year that's creative and rewarding in every way.

Needless to say, we Polar Poets have been relishing the Arctic weather that blew in come December. Susan has been knee-deep in snow over in Cardiff - take a look at her gorgeous images of frost-rimed trees in Pontcanna. And I have been loving the white-out in the Leicestershire countryside, taking plenty of opportunities for long winter treks. Here's me savouring a wonderful Arctic dawn in the Midlands - yes, as cold as it looks but utterly spellbinding ...

Susan's own website is packed with interesting news in December, including a delightful telephone call on Christmas Day. And I have been making the most of the holiday to retreat into my writing notebooks and work on a new poem sequence about Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic expedition. So it's been the perfect season to boost our creative energies.

I guess this is also the time we review the 'journey', as they'd say on 'Strictly'. This time last year we were still dreaming up this collaboration and planning a launch of this site for January. Since then, alongside a busy schedule of our own separate events, we created and rehearsed our show 'Arctic-ulate' and presented it first at Wrexham Science Festival and later at Manchester Science Festival. It's been fascinating to explore this joint approach, working out to put a programme together that draws on our different interests and yet shapes a coherent story about the Arctic. And I know that it has influenced my own writing to a large degree, inspiring this new project of writing about polar exploration, for instance.

Above all, it was fun to be performing together. So we're looking forward to more opportunities to develop the Polar Poets in 2011 and do get in touch if you have any ideas on that front. For now, pull the curtains on that grey post-snow world, pull up a good book and savour the last crumbs of the winter feast. Enjoy your farewells to 2010 in whatever form takes your fancy!

Polar Poets in the Book-House

A turreted Gothic book-house, snaked with dragons and gargoyles, was the venue for our latest Polar Poets gig. And the cathedral-like Central Reading Room of John Rylands Library in Deansgate, with its stained-glass windows and Potteresque reading nooks, was a wonderful space to unfold our arctic stories. The acoustics were great and the library staff were very supportive. A team of 'guardians' whizzed through the technical set-up and then watched over our equipment between our rehearsals. Such attentiveness and efficiency is always appreciated. Pretty good cake downstairs too ...

We were there for the Manchester Science Festival and our show, Arctic-ulate, roamed through the geology and Viking settlements of Iceland, the relationship between indigenous Arctic cultures and the landscape, the science and myths of the Northern Lights and the impact of ice melt and industrialisation on creatures of the Arctic. Our way was lit with images and we listened to traditional Saami music. You can see from the picture that lassos and pointy hats also featured in our story-telling.

This was a lovely event for us. Both the MSF festival and the library had been very good with the promotion of the show so ALL seats were pre-booked. But we still had a keen group of people who stood at the back for the show. Kids and adults alike seemed fairly engrossed. There was some interesting Q & A later about solar storms and the coming solar maximum and also the sources for our Icelandic research. And it's always nice when our audience stays around to chat afterwards and browse the books we'd brought.

I hope some of our audience got to sample other events at this excellent festival. Our own visit up north was a flying one with Susan trekking from Cardiff and myself from Leicester - but we were certainly impressed with the welcome Manchester gave us.

Arctic-ulate Up North

Well autumn is surely upon us and with it, preparations for our next POLAR POETS gig. I'm delighted that our next appearance is in my home territory of Manchester. Come October half-term I'll get a chance to catch up with my sisters in Bolton and perform our show 'Arctic-ulate' with Susan at the Manchester Science Festival. We're in the fabulously Gothic John Rylands Library in Deansgate - the perfect venue for our show. Here's a taster from the festival website:


Get Arctic-ulate in this multi-media show that interweaves poetry, performance, music and images. It explores the science and heritage of the Arctic landscape, from ice-melt and the aurora borealis to indigenous peoples and European explorers. Devised and performed by the Polar Poets, it also highlights the fragility of the Arctic at a time of climate change and increasing industrialisation.

Check it out on their website at:
http://www.manchestersciencefestival.com/whatson/arcticulate

Our show is free though requires booking and is open to adults/ teenagers. It's part of this lively science festival with over 200 events for all ages, including 'walks, talks, workshops, shows, comedy, exhibitions and more all in the name of science'. If you're in the area that week, you might also want to catch the Manchester Literature Festival 14th - 25th October which this year, curiously enough, has a science theme!

Arctic-ulating in Wrexham

So many stories, so little time. And in the steamy heat of a midsummer evening in Wrexham, we were conjuring an icy landscape – quite unable to don our usual costume of woolly hats and jacket! Susan and I were performing our brand new show, Arctic-ulate to an audience of science fans at Wrexham Science Festival. As time ran short, we were ditching poems and photos like desperate ice-trekkers trying to make the last mile. And as we moved through the plight of Inuits, polar bears and penguins facing pollution or possible extinction, the university's PC quietly shut itself down, the projector light faded and our 'Last Legend' was delivered appropriately enough in semi-gloom.

We were blessed with the intimate setting of a lecture theatre and an intelligent, responsive audience who were keen to ask questions and stay around to chat. They warmed to Susan's portrayal of the feisty Viking woman Gudrid, 'the world's most traveled woman' in her time. And they proved to be enthusiastic frost giants and football warriors when called on to participate in my Firebridge and Auroral Football poems. Later the questions and discussions focused particularly on how indigenous arctic peoples cope with the impact of westernisation and the pollution of their environment. Here's some of their feedback on our debut show:

'You two are so intelligent – you make me proud to be a woman!'

'There's so much work gone into this show – it was brilliant!'

'As a bit of a polar buff, this was right up my street. Really interesting.'

'I've always wanted to see the Northern Lights so the images were wonderful.'

This morning Susan and I got a chance to see around the rest of the Wrexham Science Festival on their Scientriffic day for families. There were wonderful interactive displays and activities for kids all over the campus. We saw children petting owls – amazingly calm creatures. There were the bugs courtesy of the Mountain Zoo. (We're also grateful to them for that side-splitting story of what happened when one of their attendants, dressed in a husky dog outfit, was mobbed by 400 brownies !) And at another stand we were blown away by pictures of 'star-dust clouds' in outer space and a narrative that took in the greatest mystery of all – what is the 'spark' that first gives rise to life on a planet? Great inspiration for a poet.

We were sorry to be missing upcoming events at the festival, such as 'Appleton: Discoverer of the Ionosphere', (Mon.5th July), 'Standing up for Nature' ( Tues 6th), 'Weathering Solar Storms' (Thurs. 8th) and 'Living Inside the Wolf Pack'. These were just some of the events which linked to our own interests but there are dozens of events to choose from all week. So all in all, great fun to do, lovely audience and a very positive debut for Artic-ulate. We're grateful to Katie, Andy and the team who looked after us, including Liam, our 'gofer' who took these nifty pictures for us. Have a great week, guys!

Notes from an Expedition: Cardiff

So here I am on a blazing June morning, standing before the Captain Scott sculpture by the Norwegian Church on Cardiff Bay. Scott, because this is where he set off on his ill-fated Antarctica expedition from. Can you see the faces of his men carved into the white mosaic? Cardiff because I'm here to meet up with Polar Poet Susan Richardson for a rehearsal of our new show Artic-ulate. The Norwegian church is a nice reminder of my own first trip to Arctic Norway to see the Northern Lights, back in December 2007. But on this particular morning, after a trek back from the bay, we were glad to escape the searing heat by diving into the arctic cool of John Lewis' store!

It was very exciting for Susan and I to get together since so much of our collaboration has been on-line. Inevitably, with me in Leicester and Susan in Cardiff. But with our first Polar Poets' gig coming up at the Wrexham Science Festival next week, there's no substitute for pacing round her sitting-room, practising our set. I'm happy to report that by the end of the day we'd identified all the themes and poems we wanted to cover, tried out some we'll perform together and swapped images to go with the words. It's shaping up. Now to brush up in front of the wardrobe mirror and gather powerpoint, music, props and woolly hats into our luggage. As Scott could tell you, good preparation is everything. And hopefully, the Polar Poets will return in one piece!

I can also report the Welsh cakes Susan served up were delicious and a breezy Water Taxi round the Bay was a wonderful end to our day out. Here's the details for our Wrexham gig:

Siobhan Logan and Susan Richardson, the Polar Poets, will be presenting their show Arctic-ulate as part of the festival's EARTH AND THE UNIVERSE theme. The Polar Poets use poetry, storytelling and multi-media performance to evoke the unique appeal of one of the planet's last great wildernesses. Having experienced this landscape first-hand, they explore the heritage of the Arctic from indigenous peoples and Viking women to European explorers. Their show also highlights the fragility of this landscape at a time of climate change.

Organisers say Wrexham Science Festival 2010 'promises to be more spectacular than ever before. The programme ... is packed with a diverse mix of events ... to encourage the investigation and enjoyment of science and technology.'

Arctic-ulate
Friday 2nd July
7.30pm, Glyndŵr University, Plas Coch Site, Wrexham
This event is free and aimed at adults aged 16+.
For bookings call 01978 293466 or email wsf@glyndwr.ac.uk
www.wrexhamsf.com/en/

Iceland: Sagas, Snow & Steam

So in the middle of our recent heatwave - too much already! - I've been reading the wonderful Laxdaela saga about Gudrun Osviksdottir and reliving the big chill of our Easter trip to Iceland. Here's another extract from my travelblog - prepare to shiver!

Tuesday April 6th

This morning all colours are muffled by the snow drifting across the road. Further east and north, there have been avalanches and schools closed, Bragi says. Outside the bus, black lava pokes through a white landscape. Yellow grasses quiver into the wind. On the heights, mist is smothering the ridges - or it might be snow pouring down gullies. The sky is tearing hanks of grey cloud, a milky light curdling in the gaps beyond.

Bragi reveals that Iceland's tradition of poetry and storytelling is very much alive and thriving with poetry clubs and radio/TV competitions. The tight forms and highly symbolic language of the original sagas are still used, as well as more modern forms. And I'm delighted that our first destination today is Reykholt, the home of Snorri Sturlson, a landmark figure in medieval Icelandic literature. Sturlson penned the famous Prose Edda which recount the doings of the Norse gods as well as Icelandic settlers and several sagas, including one about his ancestor, the warrior-poet, Egil Skallagrimsson. Sturlson was a poet himself and canny politician but when he double-crossed the King of Norway, he was hacked to death in his own cellar at Reykholt. Should have stuck to the pen perhaps ...

Next stop was Hraunfossar, a truly spectacular series of waterfalls that seem to stretch for miles. The wind had dropped at last and the landscape was etched in black rocks, white snow and the piercing blue of the waterfalls and river below. Photographs cannot convey the thundering gush of the water or the creaking of the snow underfoot but you can see we were lucky to catch this place in its wintry colours. It was blistering cold with great ice splinters hanging from the waterfall but we could hardly tear ourselves away.

Back at the Foss Hotel, we were treated to a delicious buffet lunch of home-made soups & breads, salads, coffee and fruit. The sweet tomatoey bread was studded with lumps of salt and the tomato soup was flavoured with chips of aniseed - heavenly. This was typical of the fresh produce we encountered for lunches. We ate till we burst. Bragi was telling us how the local greenhouses were heated by the bubbling hot springs of nearby Deildartunguhver which pumps out water of 97 degrees centigrade and is piped to towns over 60 km away.

The snowy morning at Hraunfossar had been utterly magical. But this was the land of fire as well as ice - and the afternoon was to bring us to the great valley of Thingvellir and the continental rift that runs through Iceland. But that's a whole other story, that place ...

Pilgrim's Progress In Iceland

So the saga of our recent trip to the volcanic isle - between eruptions! - continues:

Day 2 Easter Monday: Snaefellnesnes Peninsula

Were we something like Chaucer's Pilgrims, a gathering of 10 strangers come together for an April journey? Or maybe Tolkien's Fellowship – he was after all inspired by those Norse myths. And certainly we had our own kindly wizard of the roads in Bragi Ragnarsson on a package tour entitled 'Iceland with an Expert'. With a gravelly Icelandic voice and easy manner, he settled into the driving seat of our mini-bus, delivering a stream of patter that took in socio-economic trends of modern Iceland (60% of its population living around the capital city), geological facts, Viking history and ancient legends of the landscape.

In a country where stories flow like lava (the highest no. of published authors per capita), he regaled us with tales of laughing mermen, exploding whales and Viking gangster-poets. At the roadside, he pointed out boulders painted with tiny doors and windows to mark the homes of the Hidden People. And Bragi also broke into a snatch of traditional Icelandic singing, a nasal chanting very like the Saami joiku in sound.

How could we not then be predisposed to the poetry of the place? On a windswept, isolated beach, the tiny Budir church was a black stub against a distant ice-capped mountain range. And these arctic winds were ferocious, battering us to the ground as soon as we emerged. Fingers froze instantly as I tried to fumble with the camera – not even the sand-dunes or craggy brown rocks offered shelter. At Arnarstapi, we stumbled along the cliff walk, amazed by the basalt sea-stacks and black promontories, stark against a deep blue sea. Further along this coast, we tumbled out onto the pebbly beach of Djupalonssandur where white surf tore over black shingle and sand.

Blue, black and brown were the day's colours. Then the vivid orange of rusted metal – remnants of a Grimsby trawler cast by tides across the lava-field, its orange shapes drawing the eye to an even stranger sight – a frozen mass of river that flowed down from the great Snaefellsnes glacier. Here at its edge, where it had frothed into nothing and frozen in an instant, I picked up glassy wafers, striated and fragile. Beyond thick shelves of ice layered one on another and swirls of blue, grey-green and brown stirred into the white.

Even on the bus, we were mesmerised by the sight of water frozen into giant splinters, often blue, spilling down the brown gorges and gullies, a world fastened tight by the spell of ice. As we rolled into Grundarfjordur, thick fat snowflakes bobbed against the windscreen, giving a promise of the morrow's weather. In a room overlooked by the fish-processing factory and white mountains, we were lulled to sleep by howling windsong.

Iceland Before the Ash

So after the pop divas and dodgy bankers, now we know it as the place that shut down half the world's planes. In recent days we've had a powerful reminder of the geological phenomenon that is Iceland. In fact, up till last Wednesday, tour operators were still flying people in for special 'Volcano Holidays' to witness 'the raw power of nature'. This Easter, between eruptions, I got to visit this amazing sub-arctic country and here's the opening of my journey's weblog:

Day One: Easter Sunday Kevlavik

They should have called it Brown-land. A disappointed Viking, stumbling across a giant frozen fjord, named this place Iceland. But coming in from the air, all we could see was a flattened landscape in rusty browns, dusty yellows; so many craters and volcanic cones and even the still-smoking eruption off in the distance. No trees, hardly any houses, and in the centre a brown nothingness to lose yourself in.

Soon we're driving through this volcanic landscape. Some frost-giant has fly-tipped a truck-load of debris – ash and lava and rubble – and it's fallen any old way. Toppling cairns and strange sculptures of black tufa rise up, clumpy rocks smothered in grey lichens and mosses. And at the rim of this flattened wasteland are peaks bare of vegetation, dusty as lunar ridges in colours of iron that got wet.

At the nearby Blue Lagoon, spa, we negotiate communal changing rooms to tumble into the blue-milky waters of this man-made lagoon. Chattering with the season's tourists, it is astoundingly warm and pleasant to sit in the open-air which we know must be icy, surrounded by those rusted-iron hills. Weird and wonderful, exactly as promised. We come out crusted with minerals like the rocks arranged around those milky pools. Not great for the hair but Icelanders reckon it's a tonic for the skin.

And if that was not enough, on our first evening in Iceland, the beautiful Northern Lights Inn lived up to its name. As darkness fell around 10 o'clock, we climbed into the observatory tower and it was like someone had thrown a switch. The aurora borealis snapped into view – ghostly green whirlpools coiling and slithering across the heavens. Up in the Sky-land, a reindeer herder was lassoing the stars, throwing out ropes of colour that brightened and vanished. I thought of all those mythic forms as it morphed from a 'bridge of fire' to a swan snagged in ice to the Merrie Dancers and warriors kicking a spectral football.

For a time then, there seemed to be a lull in the show. But when we donned layers and braved the balcony, we could see a haze of sun-dust smothering the stars in drifts. When it thickened the aurora was not as vivid in colour but far more dynamic in its movement. Suddenly we were seeing great swathes of this dusky light undulating in quick pulses ever-higher. I felt then we really were watching the magnetosphere 'twang and buckle' and the freezing arctic wind seemed to give an echo to the solar winds roaring silently behind this display. Like pebbles caught a great cosmic stream, we watched it funneling light in from space, the veil of the earth's ionosphere folding and rippling before our eyes.

At midnight when we retreated shuddering with cold, the aurora was still playing itself out. We'd only been in Iceland for half-a-day. Could the next three days possibly live up to what we'd already experienced in this other-worldly place?

Polar Poets at Wrexham

Get this - the first ever Polar Poets gig is now booked!

We will appear at the Wrexham Science Festival in North Wales at 7.30pm on Friday 2nd July. If you're in that part of the world, do come and see us!

The Wrexham Festival is designed to make science accessible and exciting to all ages. Organisers want it to be “the highlight of the early summer calendar ... to have a fresh feel and encourage us all to investigate, enjoy, learn and re-think our ideas about science and technology."





Our Polar Poet event will address the Earth & the Universe theme and here's a flavour of what we'll offer:

Arctic-ulate is a multi-media show that interweaves poetry, storytelling, performance, monologue, music and Powerpoint images. It evokes the unique appeal of the Arctic, one of the planet’s last great wildernesses, and explores the science and heritage of this landscape, from ice-melt and the aurora borealis to indigenous peoples and European explorers.

Devised and performed by the Polar Poets, Siobhan Logan and Susan Richardson, it also highlights the fragility of the Arctic at a time of climate change and increasing industrialisation. We aim to entertain, to cast word spells, but also to encourage people to reflect on some of the most pressing environmental issues of our time.

So now we get to do the fun bit - organise a meet-up and start doing some rehearsing. Think polar skies and penguins, Saami music and saris, solar dust and Scott's Antarctic trek ... So many stories and images and sciencey bits - and now we get to play two voices off each other. I can't wait to start working on this new show, Arctic-ulate.

Watch this space to see how it's shaping up ...

Sub-arctic Day-dreams

Laid up with a hacking cough and cold, I am taking comfort today in my ICELAND brochure. Because we've just booked 5 days at Easter and I am so excited! We'll land in Reykjavik on Easter Sunday and then get to trek round the lava fields, hot springs and glacial landscapes of the South West - with an 'Iceland expert' in tow.

I got to meet a rep. from the 'Discover the World' company at my recent Northern Lights event and grabbed a copy of her brochure. So right now, I'm marvelling at their stunning photographs of exploding geysers, beaches tumbled with icebergs, cliff stacks pounded by sub-arctic seas. Ever since visiting arctic Norway, (see above) I've been longing to venture to another polar setting and Iceland, even below the arctic circle, is an enticing prospect. It's an otherworldly place and I'm hoping to catch the tail end of their winter.

So expect to hear more of my plans for this expedition over coming weeks. I also plan to post up a weblog while I'm out there - starting 5th April. Time to dig out those wonderful Viking sagas and do some fresh research on the landscapes, geology & culture of Iceland. Maybe even learn how to pronounce some of those fabulous nordic place names - Snaefellsnes - Grundarfjordur - Thingvellir.

I'm following in Susan's footsteps of course - having been inspired by her beautiful 'Gudrid' poems. And we are firming up plans right now that I hope will lead to a posting of our first ever Polar Poets gig. But for now, I'm just conjuring images of 'the land of Fire and Ice' as I sip on the honey and ginger hot lemon toddies.

A Rimed Thing

'hear yourself rustling in the silence,
smell frost-needles fastening hair ...'

'Firebridge to Skyshore'

All morning the mist curled around its threads until finally, my hair froze, just like my poem. I was become another rimed thing in the landscape. Only we weren't in the Arctic but in the hills of Hathersage, Derbyshire. At 8.30 am, the sun was a shrunken disc above Carl Wark. Barely luminous at all. The intricate textures of this world lay revealed in crystals and dendrites.

Feathery rings of wood grain on a post; a lattice of splinters in a bootprint; frost blossoms bursting on the heather. Up on the heights, rocks crouched like giants petrified in the mist. Spectral sounds drifted through of a crow kaarking, a sheep bleating, my stick clink-clinking a frozen puddle. The moorland's thorny trees were black fractals in the gloom. Under an overhang, icicles exploded along grass stems and erupted into bubble-wrap on a boulder.

Susan and I are both writers who draw creative sustenance from this season. I've written nothing new this past month, beyond blogs and reviews, but I have been squirreling away nuggets of thought, creamy tubers of winter sweetness. We're busy firing off applications for Polar Poet gigs, mainly at summer festivals, and when we're telling tales of the Arctic, this time will be our hoard of inspiration.

Bootmarks Between

Well, a fortnight's passed and Susan and I have been very busy in our respective corners of the country. In Cardiff, Susan's been teaching and performing at local gigs. Tomorrow, she's making an appearance - so to speak - on Radio 4 for Saturday Live as one of their resident poets. Last time I heard Susan on the radio, talking about the way winter landscapes inspire writers, I was moved to dash out with my camera and snap the snow. I'm glad I did because next day the thaw started and we've had ne'er a flake in Leicester since!

And in my corner over in the Midlands, I've been kept busy preparing for an event that fuses poetry, physics and film at the National Space Centre. With some good local coverage, our Northern Lights Spectacular is now a sell-out show which is thrilling. The flyers are done, the glowsticks have arrived and I just need to shake out the sari and polish up some poems for the big night. Meanwhile, I've been keeping my hand in with a talk for a local village WI. I thoroughly enjoyed the enthusiastic reception in Botcheston Village Hall and even got to judge the Candle Competition!

So what of the Polar Poets and our arctic expedition? Well, this page may have been looking untrodden for a few weeks but behind the scenes, there's plenty afoot. We're exploring lots of interesting possibilities for festivals and venues later in the year. And when we have more news, you'll be the first to know! For now, enjoy another photo and bask in the snow nostalgia ...

Packing Up the Sled

Well, it's been a fun week sharing this Polar Expedition with you and now we have some prizes to hand out. It was a close-run thing on the Caption Competition and we were delighted to have so many entries to choose from. In the end, we decided to pick out 2 Caption winners. There was only one entry for the Quiz but Bill was spot-on in his answers (although Alaska is still on our-wishlist). We enjoyed the humour in all of them.


So here are our 3 winners:

CAPTION COMPETITION:

Both Sides Now wins a copy of Firebridge to Skyshore for:

top photo: Poet Ahoy!

Bottom photo: This way to The Road Less travelled

and Celia wins a copy of Creatures of the Intertidal Zone for:

Top: 'Today, especially for Erik, I am mainly wearing red.'

Bottom: 'From the Northern Lights H&S Department - please find attached an image depicting the latest provision for those suffering from over-exposure to reconginsed phenomena'

POLAR POETS QUIZ:

Bill wins copy of Stories Drummed poems DVD by Siobhan (see his answers here)

Congratulations to all of you and we hope you enjoy your prizes. If you contact us on polarpoets@googlemail.com we can arrange to send these on to you.

And that's not all, folks ... We've been busy contacting venues and festivals all week so we hope we will soon have news of our first bookings for the Polar Poets. If you have any suggestions of your own, we'd love to hear them. Meanwhile, we will keep posting on the progress of our venture and any thoughts on the arctic world we've been trekking through. So don't be a stranger - do drop in and see us again! I'll leave you with an image from my last visit to Norway - a fjord in its autumn colours - utterly magical.

Poems: Polar Night & Husky Sledding

Well, we've reached Day 5 of our Polar Poets bloglaunch and it's been great to have so many visitors and messages. Later today, we'll post up details of the winners of our Caption Competition and Quiz. So watch this space!

Meanwhile, we thought it was time to give you a taster of our Arctic poetry. We've each picked one poem from our collections - Creatures of the Intertidal Zone and Firebridge to Skyshore: A Northern Lights Journey. And we'd love to hear any thoughts you have about them.

Siobhan:

When I first visited Tromso in Norway, they were in the middle of Polar Night. At latitude 69º and into the Arctic Circle, the Far North of the country sees no sun between late November and mid-January. Although there was daylight from about 10am, it was dusk at noon and pitch dark by 2pm in the afternoon. A laavu is a Saami tent, similar to a teepee, which we stayed in when we visited a reindeer herder in Ramfjorden.

POLAR NIGHT

is a sodden blanket
pulled in close
to the hulk of mountain
the scattered pebble
glitter of a city


morning is
a weft of muddy yarn
a pelt of scraped skin
thrown around the
jagged birch-sticks
of a laavu


noon is a puddle
of rising murk:
like reindeer milk
in a stomach sac
the light curdles
into dark


© Siobhan Logan 2009

Susan:

During my time in Greenland, I was lucky to have the opportunity to fulfil a lifelong ambition by going husky sledding. I knew I wanted to write a poem about this extraordinary experience - but really took myself by surprise when it turned into a poem about the frustrations of writer's block and waiting for creative inspiration!

WAITING AT THE BREATHING HOLE

The white of this screen burns
my eyes. Its unswerving glare
might well make me snow-blind.

There was a time when words would fly
across the screen, like a dog-team speeding,
each at its peak and pulling
equally and all I’d have to do was leap
aboard the sledge, guide it
in the right direction, then
relish the ride.

But suddenly,
we hit uneven ice.
Bumped over ridges.
I fell from the sledge. The dogs fled.
The instructions I yelled
had no meaning.

So now, with tender eyes,
I must hunt for a hole in the white

and wait

patient

at the rim
for the whiskered nose of inspiration,
for a flippered urge to surge to the surface.

And when it comes, I won’t shoot it,
harpoon it skin it rip its liver out and eat it raw
leave banners of blood on the snow.

No. I’ll feed it all the saffron cod and shrimp it needs,
teach it to move with the ease it knows beneath
the ice

but first, I’ll take a few steps back
and just let it

breathe

© Susan Richardson 2009

Interview: Football & Sneezes in Arctic Skies

So here's our second Polar Poets Interview. Today, Susan gets to quiz Siobhan about her trip to Tromso in Norway, a place known as the 'Gateway to the Arctic'.

Q. When and why did you first become fascinated by the Northern Lights?

I first came across the Northern Lights in a favourite childhood story, The Snow Queen. They're described by Hans Christian Andersen as lights 'sneezing' in the sky, which is wonderful. But my imagination was taken with the whole arctic landscape of those stories, the reindeer flying with Gerda over frozen wastes. But the poetry started back in December 2005 when someone asked me to write about legends of the Northern Lights.

Q. You write, in Firebridge to Skyshore, of the many myths and indigenous stories about the Northern Lights that exist throughout the Arctic. What is your favourite story and why?

I discovered a whole treasure trove of stories and became very interested in the indigenous peoples around the arctic circle – the Inuits, Saamis, Siberian tribes and so on. Probably my favourite is a story shared by the Inuits and Native Americans – that the lights are the spirits of ancestors playing football in the sky with a walrus skull. That's just so playful and surprising. But I also love that idea of the aurora as a 'pathway' into another dimension, the spirit world of 'sky-dwellers'.

Q. How does science feature in your poetry of the aurora?

Right from the start, this project was bound up with the Physics & Astronomy department of Leicester University. My poems were for Jackie Stanley, a digital artist planning an exhibition for their building. Then later, I got sponsorship from a group of auroral scientists, the Radio & Space Plasma Physics Group, to visit an auroral site in Norway. This included a tour of the EISCAT research facility out there. So the scientific narrative was always blended with the mythic for me – the story of how 'sun-dust' creates the aurora is a fabulous tale in itself.

Q. If you could pick just three words to sum up your experiences of arctic Norway, what would they be?

That kind of economy is beyond me for such an awesome experience. But 3 moments: flying over the glacial mountains of Norway with those frozen-sheet lakes and white plateaux; becoming a 'sky-watcher', catching the shifting light and colours of Polar Night; spending a morning in a Saami tent or 'laavu' with a reindeer herder. Actually it was my own version of Gerda's arctic journey ...

Q. One of the prose sections in your book is titled 'The North in Flux' What evidence of 'flux' did you see on your arctic journey?

Well, the first thing was getting there. In December 2007, we were on one of the first direct flights – 3 hours from Stansted to Tromso in the Arctic . Tourism is opening up the region – also cruises to Antarctica – which has to change this wilderness. Then we landed in heavy rains that lasted for weeks. The snow had melted with close to summer temperatures. It was very disturbing to experience climate change so sharply. Saami herders were having to buy in hay for migrating reindeer that couldn't get to eat their ground lichen. Clearly, both arctic creatures and indigenous peoples are going to struggle.

Q. When you got to see the Northern Lights for the first time, how did you react? And having finally achieved your ambition to see them, what's next? Do you have any plans for further arctic travels?

Like a giddy child, shouting out, laughing, pointing at them in amazement. Lost in wonder even as the stories and the science came together to inform what I was seeing. We were out on a ship in a fjord on a freezing October night in 2008 – the stars were so vivid and shone through these auroral curtains of light that just kept shifting into new shapes. And they so seemed to have a will of their own as they danced and flashed. Of course, I'm totally hooked and already planning a trip to Iceland this spring.

pictures: Siobhan Logan

The Polar Poets Quiz

So how well do you know your Polar Poets? Today's competition is a quiz. The first person with the right answers (or closest to!) will win a prize. Like the Caption Competition, we'll run this one till Thursday tea-time. Stick around - there's another interview tomorrow with Siobhan and you might pick up more ideas ...

1. Which Arctic and sub-Arctic countries have the Polar Poets visited between them?

2. When Susan was asked at 6 years old what she wanted to be when she grew up - what was her answer?

3. What Arctic role did Siobhan take on-stage as a child?

4. In which museum did Siobhan perform her Northern Lights poetry?

5. On top of which mountain did Susan perform her eco-poetry in September 2009?

6. What is the connection between Cardiff, Antarctica and the Polar Poets?

P.S. a sneaky clue ... as well as this blog, you might want to take a look at both poets' websites to check out some of this info.

Interview: Penguin Letters

Our Polar Poets launch has given us the chance to interview each other for this blog. Today, I get to pose 6 questions to Susan. (On Thursday, she returns the favour.) Fascinated by her travels round Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland, I wanted to know more about that journey.

Q. What first got you interested in visiting the Arctic/sub-Arctic? How did you get there?

I was teaching a course called Intrepid Women Travellers at Cardiff University when I first came across a reference to a tenth/eleventh century female Viking called Gudrid. I quickly became fascinated by her. Later, I was lucky enough to get funding (a Churchill Memorial Travel Fellowship) to follow in Gudrid’s footsteps and to write a book both about her journeys, and my own. I travelled through the sub-Arctic/Arctic in various ways – by plane, bus, boat, plus I also sailed on a replica Viking boat.

Q. Tell us about these Viking women. Were you able to visit places they lived in?

Gudrid is in my opinion, one of the most intrepid women in world history! I spent several weeks in her birthplace on the Snaefelsnes Peninsula in Iceland, explored the area she farmed in Greenland and also visited the Norse ruins on the north-western tip of Newfoundland which are believed by many to be the settlement she co-founded with her husband, Karlsefni.



Q. What is it with you and penguins? (They feature heavily in the poems.) Did you get to see penguins - or any arctic wildlife?

Penguins don't live in the Arctic - though I saw caribou, moose, a variety of whales and dolphins, sea birds galore and black bears in Newfoundland. However when reading polar explorers’ narratives, I started to have a series of very bizarre dreams in which penguins prominently featured. In one recurring dream, for example, a large penguin kept being delivered through my letterbox. And in another, I was actually metamorphosising, night-by-night, into an Emperor Penguin! So it was only a matter of time before penguins began waddling their way into my poems as well as into my dreams.

Q. Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland. What was your most striking impression of each place?

Iceland – the landscape, especially the area around Gudrid’s birthplace, located on a wild and windswept peninsula at the foot of a now dormant volcano, topped by a cap of ice.
Greenland – the weather. I was in the southwest fjord region where Gudrid lived, during the summer, but I hadn’t expected the weather to be so stable or so warm (up to 20 degrees on some days). And the mosquitoes – I’d come across on a previous Arctic journey, to Finnish Lapland, but the Greenland mosquitoes were particularly persistent.
Newfoundland – the warmth and hospitality of the people and the fact that conversations I expected to last for twenty minutes would often still be going strong four hours later!

Q. What was it like to be in the middle of all that ice? Was it melting? What was the light like?

I was often on the fringes, rather than in the middle, of the ice, but I saw, and heard talk of, lots of evidence of rapid melt, which was very alarming from an environmental point of view. Some of the icebergs I saw were exquisite in terms of their shapes and colour – often the most brilliant shade of blue.

Q. Your last sequence of poems went south, to revisit the story of Scott and his men in Antarctica. What was the appeal of this story? Any chance of following in their footsteps?

I have always wanted to go to Antarctica – and have been fascinated by the Scott story and the debate as to whether he was a polar hero or an incompetent fool since I was a child. However, I’ve become increasingly mindful of the impact of global travel on climate change so regretfully, I don’t think I’ll be going south in the near future.




PS many thanks again to Paul Lomatschinsky for these gorgeous aerial photos of Greenland - spectacular!

Breaking the Ice

So welcome to the first day of Polar Poets Go Live! We're very excited to be launching our Arctic expedition into this white space. All this week, we'll be posting up blogs, with interviews, quizzes and poems, to give you a flavour of what the Polar Poets are about. We hope you'll join in, post a comment, maybe even win a prize!

Let's do introductions first. The well-known eco-poet Susan Richardson has performed in sites as diverse as a Welsh mountain, BBC Radio 4 and the Green Party Conference. Her collection, Creatures of the Intertidal Zone ranges from Viking women in the sub-arctic to explorers at the South Pole, with penguins, icebergs and escaped wildlife in between.

Siobhan Logan performs poetry about the myths and science of the Northern Lights. Her collection, Firebridge to Skyshore: A Northern Lights Journey features reindeer and polar bears, scientists and Saami people, as well as the mysterious aurora. Her work has appeared at venues including London's Science Museum and the National Space Centre.

Now we are joining forces to bring our stories of the Arctic to venues across the country, offering workshops, talks or performances. If you're interested in booking us - or maybe have ideas about venues we could approach - Contact: polarpoets@googlemail.com

We're also grateful to Paul Lomatschinsky for his generous offer to use his photographs of Greenland. (Check out his own aerial adventure on http://www.itftuk.com/ )


So here's a little Caption Competition to get us started today. The 2 pictures on this posting show Susan and Siobhan on their intrepid travels. And the person who comes up with the best captions for both photographs will win a PRIZE. How can you resist having a go? Just post your comment below.

and if you pop back on Wednesday you can have a crack at our POLAR POETS QUIZ too.

Winners will be revealed on Friday - as will prizes! See you then ...