Listening for Ice

While the post-Christmas thaw sets in here with its slush and grey skies, I've been hibernating in a corner of Antarctica. Mornings huddled over my Shackleton poems, wrestling sea leopards, hauling boats across hummocks, listening to the sounds of ice pressure and Emperor Penguins. Sometimes I don't even make it out of my pyjamas. The opportunity to fully immerse myself in this alien landscape, in the detail of the story, is too precious to squander.

Progress north is good so far. A dozen poems more or less edited, three new ones bashed out to plug some gaps in the narrative. Because it's all about story, this sequence - a staggering tale of 28 men drifting backwards and forwards in the pack ice while another party of 10 braved the worst conditions of the continent to lay food depots for an Imperial Transcontinental expedition that literally never got off the ground. The kind of winter tale you can really lose yourself in.

This afternoon, I'm checking out the scavenging habits of skuas, the blow-holes of killer whales and terms for ships's parts and ice-bergs. Binnacle for instance; and growlers, bergie-bits and brash ice. These words lend a particular texture and even music to the poems. I'm also trying to channel voices that might convey the story from within that tight-bound group of men. My sources, books and films, carry lots of extracts from the diaries that men were required to fill for the expedition. Shackleton was a consummate storyteller as well as a master of the psychology of survival.

And now that the sequence of around two dozen poems is firming up, I'm starting to think that I'd like to try them out for performance. A reading at the very least - hopefully with some pictures and context. Shake out the pages, open up those voices and see how the tale hangs together. Something to aim for in the New Year - we'll see. For now, I'm hunkered down in my tent with the prospect of blubber and dog pemmican for tea. I may be some time ...