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.