A CALL FOR CREATIVITY
POEMS INSPIRED BY FRIDTJOF NANSEN'S LITHOGRAPH OF A POLAR BEAR
A CALL FOR CREATIVITY
The Summer of 2020 was a Summer unlike any we have experienced before. In the face of these strange times, we sent out a call for creativity to inspire our audiences. Our participants wrote poetry as a response to the image of Fridtjof Nansen's Lithograph of a Polar Bear. Created a century ago, the lithograph sits in the Museum of the University of St Andrews' collection, and still evokes a powerful response in viewers. The poems here are the responses we received. Ranging from the humorous to the historical, the ecological to the nostalgic, these poems capture the broad range of emotions a single image can invoke. With accompanying commentrary by the acclaimed poet Juana Adcock, we hope these poems captivate you and inspire you to create something wonderful.
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JUANA ADCOCK
Juana Adcock is a poet, translator and performer working in English and Spanish. In 2016 she was named one of the ‘Ten New Voices from Europe’. Her English-language debut, Split (Blue Diode Press, 2019), was awarded the Poetry Book Society Winter Choice for 2019.
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JON MILLER
Dear James and Lady Irvine,
may I introduce to you this polar bear? He will arrive at your door eventually. Treat him kindly. He will need fed. Take him to the kitchen. Leave the fridge door open and do not light a fire. Sit him at your table and have him tell his story. It will not take long. It is an old one. There is no point in being afraid. He can run faster than you what he brings you cannot outrun. He will stink, mainly of sea and seal but also of various carcasses walrus, whale, reindeer, and, lately, arctic fox and dolphin. On his breath he carries a vanishing world; in his eyes a world filling with water. After he has left, you will need to mop the puddle on your floor. Jon Miller lives in Ullapool and has published a poetry pamphlet ‘still life’ (Sandstone Press). His poetry, reviews and literary journalism has appeared in a range of Scottish and UK literary magazines.
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"THIS ARROW GOING STRAIGHT INTO THE SOUL....THIS WORLD IS VANISHING." Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Jon Miller
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A Picture of a Polar Bear Here I am walking straight into the lens of a camera.
GORDON MEADE
It is another time. It is another age in which my world is still enveloped in white. Take a snap of me now and everything will have changed. I will still be here but most of the snow and ice will have gone. There will also be less of me. The photograph will probably be in full colour but the sub-text written in black and white will tell you in no uncertain terms that I am now an endangered species
Gordon Meade lives in Upper Largo, Fife. His tenth collection, Zoospeak, a collaboration between himself and the Canadian photographer and animal activist, Jo-Anne McArthur, was published in 2020 by Enthusiastic Press, London.
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“THERE’S NO BITTERNESS IN THE BEAR… WHICH IS ALL THE MORE POIGNANT, MAGNIFIES ALL THE THINGS THAT ARE NOT BEING SAID” Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Gordon Meade
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Kieron P. Baird is a published writer, on a personal journey of self-discovery and improved mental well-being. Recent publications include: Speculative Books – The Centenary Collection, The Glow of Emerald Light and Flora Fiction – Literary Magazine.
Polar Bears KIERON P. BAIRD
Powerful, apex; built for a tundra backdrop. On cold plains where temperatures can reach sub-zero. Lone wanderers, camouflaged in the vast white swirl. Arctic adapters, in motion or inertia. Reclusive until mothers have cubs to care for. But despite this, vulnerable; under our thumb. Ever dependent on abundant snow and ice. Always at risk from humans, is their dilemma. Rising temperatures could see them disappear. Sadly, action is slack and slow are the changes…
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"KIERON P. BAIRD TALKS ABOUT THE BEAR'S DILEMMA. ON ONE HAND THEY'RE REALLY POWERFUL BUT ALSO VULNERABLE. IT'S SO IMPORTANT TO TALK ABOUT THESE THINGS." Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Kieron P. Baird
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Night Snap in Soft Pencil This fresh unpadded hour the old familiar lifts a paw. I stare a pinhole camera
MICHAEL GREAVY
skin’s blank face, my map, this place tricks of light and glass sleet now into illness a pencil smudge, shuffled stop, soft claws and loose distraction amnesia
amnesia
Air falls half-heard a broken conversation (light off blossom in the night has no real translation) and what I meant, mean to say: notes unposted home a Curzon where lost film loops all day in lingo no one knows and God is the projectionist but doesn’t show and times like this come full on. The horizon is my empty page of snow-light and time is lost white space
Michael Greavy is a teacher from Manchester. Recent poems have appeared in Stand, Magma and The Frogmore Papers. The Art of Throwing your Voice was shortlisted for the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition.
like skin beneath a wedding ring, where I slip the worn hole of my patience and find damp dregs, slant sun, stranded ghosts unshaded here looking for December, breath of the last snow bear
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“A LOT OF IT IS ABOUT THE SOUNDS, CONTRASTING DIFFERENT TEXTURES. I DON’T OFTEN FIND POETRY WHICH IS SO MUCH ABOUT TEXTURE.”
Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Michael Greavy
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Bear Island ALAN GAY from 'All Points North' - the voyage to Bear Island, Svalbard, Jan Mayen, Greenland & Iceland on the yacht Border Raider 1995 For Alan Gay Bear Island came at a time of change to his life: from Education to fulltime Sailing. His three children were brought up on readings from Nansen's Farthest North and he yearned to follow the Fram.
Our eyes turn to a tiny isle where fog plays hide and seek Birds on tramlines lead to a blinded mull and lee shore sun We anchor row ashore and sit lulled by the rocking beach as it tries to mimic the sea Our presence does not dispel the Bear Island of Fridtjof Nansen too long dwelling in the inner realms to be merely biographical Mount Misery hides behind its crumbling cliffs un-climbed
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“THE HALF RHYME BETWEEN EYES AND ISLE IS REALLY BEAUTIFUL”
Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Alan Gay
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ANGELA BLACKLOCK-BROWN
Polar Bear I am the Aristocrat of the Arctic, a chameleon in my translucent , cosy fur coat, double- lined, no less, padding proudly across the snow ice with my super-grip paws. I’m on a mission, sniffing the air and ground for scents and sounds of dinner I’m ravenous, could sink my jaws into a seal, not fussy what size, as long as I can stave off my hunger. I am hunter and hunted, feared and fearful. Inuits will spear me, steal my coat and body. I will lie bleeding, yet my spirit will not die.
Originally from Dumfries and Galloway, Angela Blacklock-Brown studied Modern Languages at Edinburgh University, taught in schools, worked at the Scottish Poetry Library and has an M.Phil from Glasgow in Creative Writing. She enjoys world travel.
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"I REALLY LIKE THE IDEA OF GIVING A VOICE TO THE POLAR BEAR, IMAGINING WHAT THE BEAR MIGHT BE EXPERIENCING."
Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Angela Blacklock-Brown
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MARYANNE HARTNESS
Polar Impressions Perfectly built, this ship of the Arctic, holds bear faced endurance, its independence obvious on treacherous routes where giant pads tread gently, aware of any weakness below
Maryanne Hartness is a Scottish poet, interested in the natural world. Her work involves highlighting, the plight of nature due to Global Warming. Also other forms of human interference, which leads to habitat loss and wildlife extinction
fitness dictates here hunger drives and the wanderer moves on.
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Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Mary Ann Hartness
“IT’S INTERESTING TO SEE THE POEM AS A FILM AND ITS DOCUMENTARY STYLE OF CAMERA WORK”
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Finola Scott's poems are published on postcards, tapestries, posters, in New Writing Scotland, PB, Lighthouse and The High Window. Red Squirrel Press publish her pamphlet Much left Unsaid. Finola is currently the Makar of the Federation of Writers (Scotland). More poems can be read at fb Finola Scott Poems.
FINOLA SCOTT
thin ice pale & confident she steps out the wide paws Attenburgh admires splayed to meet this moment doesnt't hear the ice deep melt to caves hollow hair cocoons her reflects refracts bright snow white azure sky fur sun white turquoise secret black skin her warming companion ignorant of glaciers rushing to lemming calve leaves her own babes hunts wider and hungrier further beyond hunger claws whetted to snatch-grab blubber unaware of thinning sky layers tiny ears tuned to sweet salt feasts below ice shifting ice sweet breathing holes of others can't feel the rainforests burning sleeps denned in danger dreams false as christmas promises
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"THIS (POEM) HAS A BEAUTIFUL MUSIC AND CADENCE WHICH HELPS US, WITH THE LANGUAGE, TURN MORE TO THE EXPERIENCE, AND THE SENSATIONS OF THE BEAR AND THE POLAR SETTING" Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Finola Scott
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GEORGE COLKITTO
bear Bear comes out from the bones of rock in Fridtjof Nansen’s sketch of grey and grey and white do I understand nothing is black and white does it frighten me to see that strength see Bear moving with purpose with places to go in his realm does it worry me Bear is disappearing from his landscape alien to me and dying as I look and do nothing this is how I should see him a lone predator not my victim scavenging in man’s midden or half-starved on a disintegrated ice sheet Ironic that the picture carries Hearty good wishes a New Year greeting to St Andrews I foresee this ends badly for Bear and Man glacier’s melting nations drowning a plastic ocean greed and greed grey and grey
George Colkitto writes for pleasure of words. He has poems in Linwood, Johnstone, and Erskine Health Centres. Recent publications are two poetry collections from Diehard Press and a pamphlet from Cinnamon Press.
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“SO IT’S A REALLY INTERESTING QUESTIONING THAT THE POEM ASKS US TO EMBARK ON.” Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of George Colkotto
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Walking into an Uncertain Future These days he goes hungry, the ice melts beneath his feet, as shelves shift into the sea
He doesn’t know the rocks will be bare of snow, silent in the face of starvation. He prowls with noble mien, steady pace, blending but not quite blended into this polar landscape, the only sign of life occupying the white.
SUE WALLACE-SHADDAD
leaving him, like others, a refugee, never at peace. There is no turning back.
Sue WallaceShaddad is currently completing the Newcastle University/Poetry School London MA in Writing Poetry. Her short collection ‘A City Waking Up’ about Sudan will be published by Dempsey and Windle in October 2020.
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“A REALLY INTRIGUING POEM. IT HAS A BEAUTIFUL ELEGANCE IN IT.” Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Sue Wallace-Shaddad
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We follow
CAMILA CONTRERAS
Looking for the horizon, I cannot see. We’ve been swallowed by a gaping white mouth the snowy tundra is a desert, barren wasteland. An ominous feeling rises in my chest. I feel a presence despite the brightness, as if stuck in the darkness made of white. The strong northern winds send ripples of flakes through the air, the sharpness catching the skin of my face. Everything is an obstacle, but we carry on, cold, aching and determined. We don’t know what awaits. Instead we hold on to the certainty that this is important, that we are going somewhere, anywhere. There are heavy footprints, imprints of life. They follow a path toward the sea, to freedom and food. We follow them in search of answers.
Camila ContrerasLanglois is a Latinx / French Canadian writer currently based in Scotland. By day she is a travel writer, by night she writes about her heritage, travels, and the natural world.
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"WHAT STRUCK ME THE MOST FROM READING IT WAS FEELING THE EXPERIENCE OF MAKING Juana Adcock, THIS JOURNEY commenting on TO THE the poetry of ARCTIC." Camila Contreras
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The Hogmanay Bear Hogmanay 1927: Unaware of the old year passing I surrender to popping ice sheets and cheering winds, And only look up by chance to see; The air around her billowing, The snow under her giving way, And even the moon bowing lighting her path or casting her shadowI cannot tell you which. And for a moment we pause and sync; the noise arounds us fades, And then she forces onwards with No time for think or drink. Hogmanay 1928: Streets abuzz with Loch Lomonds, Pubs warm with Auld Lang Synes, And bellies fill with comforts plenty But I would give it all up For the sight of her; Regal in white, Proud with scars, Content in loneliness A true martyr of the cold.
THOMAS LINEY
Thomas Linley is a St Andrews alumni and newly qualified doctor. He is currently living in London and enjoy reading and writing poetry when he has an idle moment.
Hogmanay 1929: And now My winter breath battles cold night air And the street light blinds me home, The cheers are distant patter as the rain Comes down in throws. I look back, with squinted eyes, And see she is no longer prowling But hope to see her next year, passing.
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Polar Bear (Grimsey Isle, Iceland, Arctic Circle) A polar bear hangs nailed to the Müli’s wall: a Christ in yellowing fur. How many more will arrive floating on ice-floes as the glaciers melt and the ice cracks?
Note: Müli’: (Icelandic) community hall.
STEPHANIE GREEN
Stephanie Green, originally a Londoner, has lived in Edinburgh since 2000. Her pamphlet 'Flout' (HappenStance, 2015) launched at StAnza and 'Berlin Umbrella' a poetry/sound collaboration with Sonja Heyer appeared at StAnza in 2020.
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"THERE ARE SOME REALLY STRIKING IMAGES IN HERE...ABOUT HOW MANY SPECIES WERE HUNTED TO EXTINCTION...NOW (IT) IS LESS VISIBLE BUT...MORE DANGEROUS."
Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Stephanie Green
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The Mood of a Bear
STEVE SMART
What is the mood of this bear? The shoulders seem hunched, perhaps that’s just how shoulders fall, if you are a bear. You are a hunger gnawed ursus maritimus, a sea bear lately reduced to skip diving, do you feel lucky, bear? Or just pissed? I’ve seen film - arctic whites browned, zoo cramped pacing, too fast for urban space, too slow for the wild hunt. To me those prints say passing safely some way on our right, not about to limber shift into a fear-your-sudden-death-now gallop.
Steve Smart’s poems have appeared in Atrium, Firth, The Poetry Shed, The Writer’s Café, The Curlew, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and others. Current collaborations: an interactive piece for StAnza, an anthology project based in New Zealand.
I’ve seen natural history films. Though, beyond the whispered communion of uneaten filmmakers, what do I know about it?
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“UNSTABLE BOILING ENERGY - PLAYING EVEN WITH SYNTAX AND THE WAY THAT WORDS HAVE TO ALMOST TUMBLE OUT OF YOUR MOUTH AND CREATE THIS RHYTHM.”
Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Steve Smart
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"The lithograph reminded me of the Cinque Torre in the Italian Dolomites. I trekked the Alta Via Uno in 2017 and visited the Rifugio Lagazuoi where it is possible to enter the trenches hewn out of rock at over 2800m altitude. I was fascinated because my English grandfather had met my Italian grandmother during the First World War when he was a despatch rider for the Medical Corps. Ungaretti’s Mattina inspired the title and “la tua immensità”."
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Dolomite Illumination
SUZANNE SPENCER
I plod in soft summer snow, Upon a mountain top. Not to your Arctic, as it recedes, But into my past. To the war which created me, Amongst the Dolomites. Their dusky pink Alpenglow, Masking the horrors of war. Through these hills and galleries Men carried guns and dynamite. Within the stony walls, Soldiers shivered 25 degrees, Below, and thought of home. Nor did their thick white coats protect, Their lives from bullets. Fractured fragments within the splintered limestone The rusty shells and cartridge cases, Mark the spots of death. Now Man comes in unthinking battalions, Wave upon wave, Waging war in your white wilderness, Killing you, all the same. I peer from the eagles’ eyrie, To the Marmalada, and think Of la tua immensità Defenceless in your territory Atop your glacier. I hear it cry and calve. And I turn out the light.
The lithograph reminded Suzanne Spencer of the trenches at Rifugio Lagazuoi at 2800m in the Dolomites, that she visited because her grandparents met during the First World War in Italy. Ungaretti inspired themes of illumination and immensity.
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“CONDENSING THE ENTIRE ABSURDITY OF THE WAR IN THIS TINY SPOT AND HOW HUMAN LIFE CAN BE TARGETED AND CONSIDERED DISPOSABLE WHICH IS HORRIFIC” Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Suzanne Spencer
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Tale of Nanook Food! Can smell you at hundreds of paces. Precarious out at perimeter of my territory, this ice pack. You big ones. Small ones. All vulnerable, my sustenance.
ALUN ROBERT
Scat! You can run. Retreat to your igloo or swim like a netsik. Rest assured I will catch you. Always did.
Alun Robert has achieved success in UK and overseas poetry competitions. His poems have been published in literary magazines, anthologies and ezines. During 1999, he was a Featured Writer of the Federation of Writers Scotland.
Beware! My teeth ferocious. Claws are my rapiers. My strength omnipotent across this diminishing white desert dark for your death.
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Tale of Nanook Roar! Hear growls? Sense my hisses? Fear my cries of aggression. Your scents I can follow. You cannot escape. Near! Am now close to you twixt a dovetail of ice, water, air. Drooling over skin and blubber but may forgo your red meat. Perhaps, perhaps not. Styrofoam, batteries; my dessert. Washed down with ethylene glycol my tipple for warmth.
ALUN ROBERT
Gone! Toxins take me while ice melt will decimate my ability to abattoir, my ancestral ritual. With larder now empty Valhalla beckons.
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“THIS IS A FANTASTIC POEM, SO EXCITING IN … LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE AND LANGUAGE YOU ARE CREATING FOR THIS BEAR.”
Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Alun Robert
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WILLIAM COWAN
wind seal MAN. (Song of the polar bear)
wind flake fur noise fur seal wind seal salt flake smell wind wind smell seal taste snow wind flake smell wind salt wind flake seal hole smell sea snow storm wind salt taste seal wind taste flake salt fur salt smell taste wind flake man taste ice noise wind sea smell wind ice fur noise wind smell storm ice flake man smell wind seal taste death fur smell wind salt smell noise seal man wind "I wanted to write from the bear’s point of view. To do so I did without verbal structures. Of course for all I know Polar noise smell taste Bears speak the Queen’s English quite beautifully, I certainly don’t. So. I have death man decided to allow the bears to write poetry the way I speak. MAN The structure of the poem is Standard Polar."
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"I REALLY ENJOY ANY KIND OF EXERCISE INTO IMAGINING THE LINGUISTIC STRUCTURES OF NONHUMAN ENTITIES AND HOW THEIR THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS MIGHT BE ARTICULATED" Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of William Cowan
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Polar Bear Socks for my parents, naturally
J. A. SUTHERLAND
I wear my polar bear socks in celebration of my parents’ 59th Wedding Anniversary. They send photos of their celebratory meal, taking place, à deux, in the conservatory, although the pictures only show my dad; my mother hasn’t quite perfected the ‘selfie.’ My mother’s bad habit of missing the moment has led, so many times at family celebrations, to the staging, repetition, or postponement of a special event or significant commemoration. How many wishes can a granddaughter make while Granny attempts to photograph a cake‽
J.A. Sutherland is a writer based in Edinburgh, who often uses pictures, artefacts, photography and sculpture as inspiration, producing the resulting work in limited edition art-books and in public exhibitions.
My parents weren’t of the snapshot generation, so photos of my childhood give only an essence of certain events: that once-in-a-lifetime trip now faded to recollections and blurred reminiscence; the place-names, locations, chronology somehow unimportant: instead we remember the sensation.
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J. A. SUTHERLAND .
Polar Bear Socks Once, when my now-aged parents were younger, about to embark on another exciting adventure – a guided tour of the far North Canadian Tundra to see Polar Bears in their natural environment – I told them there was no need to take a picture if they saw a bear; no need to record the event.
for my parents, naturally
In the event, one of these magnificent creatures came up to the tall outer fence of their enclosure, checking them out, erect, lifting its nose to the air. Professional photographers, or tourists of nature, had time enough to focus, check their exposure, and shoot the perfect picture snapshot souvenir. And had they missed that random shot? So what: recollections are worth far more than a camera’s lies. Yet I wear my polar bear socks in celebration that, despite so many lost or forgotten opportunities, we have a clear picture of that splendid creature: solid proof against a cloud of unreliable memorie
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“IN THIS POEM, NOTICING THAT NOT-QUITE-BEINGPRESENT-IN-THE-MOMENT – THIS FRETTING TO GET THE RIGHT SHOT – IS IN ITSELF PART OF OUR LIFEEXPERIENCE. IT’S BEAUTIFULLY RECORDED HERE. " Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of J.A. Sutherland
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ALICE TARBUCK
The snow loves the feet of the bear like a parent. It is so constant and so absolute the bear has felt nothing else, and does not know of melting. It yields a little, under the bear’s fine paws, black padded. And the bear above the cold snow thinks of fishes. The sky loves the back of the bear like a lover. It is so heavy and so full it bends itself down to the bright white fur, and scours up a wind to ruffle it, just to be close. And the bear beneath the broad sky dreams of seals.
Alice Tarbuck is an academic and writer based in Edinburgh, whose first book, A Spell in the Wild: A Year and Six Centuries of Magic, is published by Two Roads in October 2020.
The rock loves the weight of the bear like a dear friend. It is glad for the scramble of paws, for the shuffle of tired limbs, and under the bear’s bulks, it sings in shifts and groans. And the bear upon the black rock loves the world like a fact, like the most ordinary thing – loves it just by being in.
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Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Alice Tarbuck
“IT HAS THE RHYTHM AND THE MUSICALITY OF A NURSERY RHYME, A MAGIC SPELL – OR AN INCANTATION” 42
JOHAN E. M. SANDBERG MCGUINNE
BIKKÁN OVLLÁ Bikkán Ovllá is Ole Nilsen Ravna's North Saami name. He was one of the two Saami men Fridtjof Nansen employed as assistants during his Greenlandic tour, which made him the first one to cross Greenland on skis, according to the history books. Bikkán Ovllá, who was 46 years at the time, had already left Sápmi once before; he'd travelled to London in 1885 in order to be exhibited at a human zoo in London. Once there, Augustus Henrey Keane, former editor of the Glasgow Free Press and a professor of linguistics, carried out race biological studies on Bikkán Ovllá, in order to describe the "physical and mental capacities" of the Saami. While Bikkán Ovllá's descendants knew about his Greenlandic expedition, they were unaware of his time in London until Cathrine Baglo presented this fact in her 2011 PhD thesis Gone astray? Live exhibitions of the Saami people in Europe and America. I find this to be rather telling of the way Bikkán Ovllá must have been treated whilst in England. At the same time it's worth noting that Nansen complained about Bikkán Ovllá's flawed Norwegian, and remarked that they now and then communicated in English instead, which must mean that Bikkán Ovllá had picked up some English whilst at the human zoo in London. Having read Hansen's account of his Greenlandic expedition, where Bikkán Ovllá is often belittled, if in a loving way, I chose to approach the litograph of the polar bear in a slightly different way; while playing an essential role in the poem Bikkán Ovllá is said to have been deadly afraid of polar bears - it, referred to as Nanuk in the poem, has (much like Keane and Nansen) been demoted to a background figure in a story about an otherwise often silenced and forgotten character, i.e. the explorer's assistant.
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BIKKÁN OVLLÁ
JOHAN E. M. SANDBERG MCGUINNE
Johan Sandberg McGuinne is passionate about decolonisation, education and endangered languages. He grew up speaking Swedish, English, South Saami and Scottish Gaelic, and writes in all his languages. He is currently serving as the president of the Saami Writers’ Centre in Jokkmokk. You never told your family about your time in the human zoo, of your struggles as a paid prisoner herding reindeer through Alexandra Park. Keane described you as an average specimen of your people, a true aborigine, if not autochthone, yet marred by some remarkable peculiarities. You kept silent as his assistant traced your skull, your naked body – your eyes a brownish green according to his table of measurements. Years later, when Nansen, the great explorer, asked for skiers to accompany him across Greenland, you volunteered, eager to bury your English memories in foreign snow
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JOHAN E. M. SANDBERG MCGUINNE
BIKKÁN OVLLÁ That winter, Nansen complained about your age, your seasickness, your broken Norwegian and fear of polar bears And as before you said nothing – the silence deafening as the first bear galloped towards your tent. The morning after you held your tongue, ignoring the teal ice cap tearing itself asunder below you. Years later, surrounded by your children, you would sing Greenland’s reindeer pastures, the sweet smell of sedge grass as the west coast plunged into the sea; Nanuk and Keane long lost to the autumn storms.
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“… SPEAKS VOLUMES AS TO THE POWER DYNAMICS OF THE COLONIAL ATTITUDES … ANY POEM THAT DEMONSTRATES THAT IT HAS A DEPTH OF RESEARCH BEHIND IT HAS MY HEART IMMEDIATELY.” Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Johan E. M. Sandberg McGuinne
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JANE LOVELL
nunatak: a stone ridge exposed by wind, a lip of stone curled at the glaucous wind, its harrying across blown snow; a skyline ridge, blade-and-socket spine of something fossilised, claws sunk in the hidden world below; a ridge of stone, a pebbled egg abandoned in its cleft, the embryo a shock of livid skin in frozen oils; a granite ridge, its icebound edge orbited by tracks of lupine shadow swerving out across the void.
Jane Lovell is an award-winning poet whose work focuses on our relationship with the planet and its wildlife. She is Writer-in-Residence at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. Her new collection 'God of Lost Ways' is forthcoming from Indigo Dreams Press later this year.
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"I LOVE THE 'GLAUCOUS WIND' AND 'THE BLADE AND SOCKET SPINE OF SOMETHING FOSSILISED' ITS ALMOST AS IF THE LANDSCAPE IS AN ANIMAL IN ITSELF, IS ALIVE OR WAS ONCE ALIVE"
Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Jane Lovell
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CHRIS BRICKLEY
Refuge Better, far, to travel than arrive And, in the end, one’s science and exploration count for naught. To trek the farthest north a man had stood, To cling to day Originally from and life, to strain the eyes Glasgow, Chris for definition. Brickley studied at St Andrews Back home, warm, (winning a university smooth limestone cradled poetry competition on my knee. c1995) and has Crayon and block poised. worked in Fine Art The pocketbook, stained, still. since 1996. Then, recallCompiled post/punk photobook 16 All but most essential YEARS, due to be left behind published to ease the party’s passing. imminently’. The stealthy white bear, Nanuq Struck on floes, from shifting fleeting light the apex, sum of this. Evolved to be, and master. Beyond his ken, habitats in first contraction. Swift, instinctive, beast in step with ages. Alone, as is his want.
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Refuge
CHRIS BRICKLEY
From unremitting, whitest ground, it appearsbasalt stacks, mere spatial device on the flattest page. Fearing nothing, bar emptiness, dwindling reserve. Consumed by singular purpose, and drawn by a force he cannot know he reads. Borders, mere artificeMan’s making sense, like some whispered confession. For however far the trek One re-joins himself. No use for words, now, save dedication flourish, and retrospective date. The sheet was passed, and rolled Ad nauseam. An ache, for those who follow And seek more than he.
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Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Chris Brickley
‘SOMETHING QUITE PRIMAL AND ESSENTIAL IN YOUR WORDS, AND A CERTAIN KIND OF MUSICALITY THAT LENDS THEM A SOLEMN AND NEAR SACRED TONE.’ 51
Nansen's Bear i.
SARAH DAVIES
As the provisions dwindled, they began to butcher the weakest dogs to feed the needy othersstill, before that, there was time for art that hunched rock - like cathedral roughed up, jagged, punching the upper margin. Or like a house, a home, left out in the elements too long, ragged. Dear Lord and Lady Irvine, he’d write, everything we thought was adrift there is no country here, only a vast, cold ocean. How is New Yoik, New Yoik (greatest city in the world) with its ur cathedrals and blunt spires that scrape the sky? Wind howls - give me your refugees, give me your restless, passports for the dispossessed, one day an avalanche.
Sarah Davies is from Bedford via Merseyside and works in education. She has been writing most of her life, but has been publishing work for the last few years and has been featured in various magazines. She is hoping to publish her first pamphlet soon.
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Nansen's Bear
SARAH DAVIES
ii. Dear Bear, he’d writeYou turn your back, and walk how North Bears walkflat footed and stubborn across the plain of page towards the anxious reader-you'd starve in this old book. We explorers winter in huts of lie and sealskin, hold each other for warmth and self congratulation. You hunt for solitude, but starvation heads you South - great yellow jaws. Lord and Lady Irvine may not be at home for you to call, sombre in your winter coat, your claws dyed red with writing, that bear shaped hole in everything we feared. Shrug that snowstorm, shake it, from your hide, while the expeditioners limp home, lie that the world is theirs. It cracks your crevassed heart, bruises the ice, each clawfat step across this whitespace tundra.
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Ursa Major, Homo Minor
Uninterested firmament, big beast lolloping. The air here chills organs, and sits like expiration weighing in the fading light. So patiently. The rocks above nothing are black, like his black leather, and the eyes of the bear reflect the fear in mine, and now here he comes, faster than light can grow in the land of cruel shadow. The pale bear is gambolling now like a titanic lamb, his paws like asteroids which scour out craters on his planet.
GARRY STANTON Garry Stanton, a recent mature St Andrews graduate, is a musician, songwriter and novelist. He was once given a lift in the rain by the future king, and really did have a conversation, in Nova Scotia, with a logger who had shot and killed a Polar Bear.
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Ursa Major, Homo Minor He may be friendly, as his momentum brings him, but then I smell his magnificent wildness, too late too late... Because he catches me in that black nose on the still north breezeit’s too easy for him. He detects the blood in me. It is deep for him. He will hunt. He cannot stop himself.
GARRY STANTON
He is, naturally, annoyed in this century, at having to swim for fifty fucking miles to get a snack. No seal of approval, or otherwise. But when Nansen sees him, and he is noted from a mile out, there is cold and ice and warming terror- all the things a bear could desire.
I know a logger who shot a Polar Bear, once, in Newfoundland. It was either bear or man, he told me. Well, the man was alive at the end of that story. Obviously.
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"THE PHRASE 'WARMING TERROR' IS SO INTRIGUING … IT EXPRESSES ANGER, RAGE, EVEN, AT WHAT WE HAVE DONE" Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of Garry Stanton
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LYNN VALENTINE
Harbinger She greets us at midnight on the birth of the year, white fur a blessing in these dark lands. She offers fruit, jewel-red pomegranates, but on her back she lugs the burden of rocks, the weight of Arctic. The cold world frays, she tries to stitch and join with clumsy paws, knowing she will be the first to be gone. Lynn Valentine writes between dog walks on the Black Isle. She is being mentored by Cinnamon Press, after winning a place on their Pencil Mentoring scheme, with a view to organising her first poetry collection.
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I Searching for the North Pole (1888), Fridtjof Nansen For five months, alone together, Nansen and Johansen searched for the North Pole: on through the ice. Johansen cut the throats of the sled-dogs one by one, chose the weakest, fed its body to the strongest. Walrus fell to Nansen. Their eyes haunted his sleep, bobbing, wounded, from the ice.
Aileen Ballantyne is an award-winning journalist and poet. Her investigative journalism for The Guardian has twice been commended in the British Press Awards. Her first poetry collection, “Taking Flight�(Luath Press) explores flight in all its guises.
They pulled the bodies from the water, cut through the skin. The two men stank of blubber, walrus grease and blood, but they ate, thrived. And all the while the Fram drifted with the Floe, redrawing the map of our Earth: the Atlantic, it seems, is an ocean.
AILEEN BALLANTYNE
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II (Fridtjof Nansen, First High Commissioner for Refugees, (1922) Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton, searching frozen wastelands again and again, perished, while Nansen, fêted, celebrated, survived, came home, remembered the blankness. He sought out the hungry, raged at Russia’s famine. Half a million people, starved from revolution, drought, Russia's Civil War, stateless, out of their element. Nansen gave them passports: 50 countries took them in.
AILEEN BALLANTYNE
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III Nansen’s Ice Ghosts (2017) She’s left her land behind her, blank as Polar ice, hunger makes her desperate. I am you, she mouths, I am you. She freezes, fades, a sixty-second soundbite. I watch her, warm in my living room. She holds no piece of paper: no pass, no refuge. A hundred years ago, out of the ice-floes, the hand of a Nordic explorer took souls from the water, half a million held in his palm: Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Chagall, Pavlova, refugees on Nansen passports. They dance and they play for him still, colour their fugues and concertos, but not for us; for us they die on the ice, our ears deaf to their music.
AILEEN BALLANTYNE
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Farthest North Curved as a cockleshell, the ship’s hull was shaped to slip the slow megalithic grip of pack ice. Resting on a floe, it looked like a paperweight, as two men, from out of the hold, strode northwards outcasts from one of Snorri’s sagas oscillating between this world and that. Were such poleward pilgrims searching a momentary frieze of fame and time
JONATHAN CARR Hailing from Hackney in East London, Jonathan Carr has published poems in magazines including Orbis, The Interpreter’s House and Poetry Salzburg Review. He works as a screenwriter and has written a number of award-winning short films.
before others attained superior degrees north of the equatorial line? Or, as some proposed, were they searching for Symmes’ countersunk holes buried deep within the folds of snow to slipstream into a fabulous core? Later resigned to having fallen short, and asked again the origin of their yen, the two men mused on the beautiful terror of bears, the vagaries of the light, but mostly failed with words at least to voice the inarticulate.
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“IT’S BEAUTIFULLY CONSTRUCTED....A REALLY INTERESTING REFLECTION ON HOW WE CAN VOICE THE INARTICULATE”
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A C CLARKE
Ending The last bear shuffles down the last snowfield, above unreadable signs.
A C Clarke’s fifth collection is A Troubling Woman. War Baby was joint winner in the Cinnamon pamphlet competition. Drochaid, with Maggie Rabatski, Sheila Templeton, published 2019. Her pamphlet about the Éluards due out 2021.
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“I’M HAUNTED BY THIS IDEA THAT SNOW IN THE FUTURE MIGHT BE JUST A STRANGE MEMORY” Juana Adcock, commenting on the poetry of A C Clarke
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