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 ...