The Lure of Scott's Hut

With the 100th anniversary of Scott's dash for the South Pole running into this year and Shackleton's own Endurance anniversary looming, there's been a spate of documentaries on recently about Polar Explorers on the last continent. V. useful indeed for a Polar Poet, especially when they send out a celebrity/ explorer like Ben Fogle to present to camera. Suddenly I can see the texture of the ice, like ropes of sheer glass, running down the Beardmore Glacier. I can learn what pemmican looks like or what the body does when there is no more fat to burn. And I can take a virtual tour with the amiable Fogle into the darkness of a wintering Scott Hut - almost touch those ancient packs of Colman's Mustard and rusty tins of Real Turtle Soup ...

Last week's programme, The Secrets of Scotts Hut, was absolutely fascinating and raised many pertinent questions about both polar exploration and polar archaeology. Can we (or rather the New Zealanders) justify spending millions on painstakingly removing and preserving the 100s of artefacts from Scott's Hut, only to place them back in that same environment in which they are rotting - especially when only a handful of people will ever see them there? Though he might have made more of the burgeoning tourist industry which makes an ever greater imprint on Antarctica's 'pristine wilderness' - an appetite which Fogle's programme can only further whet.



Sir David Attenborough made the case that Scott's Hut is an essential historical marker of 'the human spirit' and its quest to journey into the unknown. I can see what he means if we read polar exploration in the light of millennia of human migration and colonisation of the globe. They were conscious, this Brotherhood of the South, of stepping onto the last uninhabited continent - as it then still was. 'The white edge of every map' as one of my poems has it. But pick up the diaries or the mission statements and it's clear their endeavours need also to be read in the more immediate context of turn-of-the-century European Imperialism - the same Scramble for Colonies that ushered in the First World War. Fogle was very struck by the wall of packing crates Scott erected between officers and men - a powerful metaphor for the class politics they unloaded along with the corporate sponsored foodstuffs onto the ice.


So Fogle was raking over the conflicting myths of Scott - a heroic leader who inspired undying loyalty - or a failed explorer whose obsession with beating first Shackleton then Amundsen led him to sacrifice his men's lives. Reading Scott's private diaries revealed a man of great tenderness and passion and his own photographs showed men pulling together to drag sledges across the vast Ross Ice Shelf. But any comparison with Amundsen makes Scott's party look ill-equipped and wantonly amateurish. On the other hand, Fogle's documentary shows how Scott's hut was packed to the rafters with scientific research materials and examples of the latest technology. Unlike Amundsen - or Shackleton - Scott took the science very seriously and his team amassed considerable data that contributed to the study of climate change for instance.


All key questions and debates. At the end of the day, I'm always drawn back to asking what were they really doing there? Why did they go? And why jeopardise all that was going on at Hut Point for a desperate dash to plant a flag in a wilderness? Theirs is such a very different endeavour from indigenous arctic peoples who never felt the need to stake such claims and who learned to be completely at home in their polar wilderness. From the opposite end of the century, we are still reassessing the myths. But the fascination of that frozen hut, heaped with the debris of Edwardian gentlemen explorers, remains irresistible and unarguably poignant.

Wintering out, Writing in

Winter seems to have arrived with incredible suddeness this year. So I'm feeling if I don't slow down and really taste it, the season will be gone again in the blink of an eye. And this icy Christmas week seems a frost-wrapped gift, a time that's quite-dream-like to me.


So this morning we rose early, fuelled up with porridge and scooted up to Bradgate Park, one of the loveliest places in Leicester, to catch the dawn.

And a slow burn it was, stretched out over two hours, washing colours from Arctic blue to rose to liquid gold on the water. Here's some glimpses:


It's been bone-achingly cold in air blown straight in from the Arctic. And that's kind of thrilling too for someone who's been undertaking various expeditions to Arctic landscapes in the last few years. An opportunity to layer up in all those thermals and fleeces.

Over by the water, a flotilla of small white birds in amongst the ducks - maybe Arctic refugees themselves.




Of course, it's nowhere near as freezing as Iceland was because the Arctic also has fierce winds that give their winters a real sting. When you see frozen waterfalls everywhere, then you know it's cold! But this will do very well for an old-fashioned English winter.


And I still get giddy faced with a frozen puddle or ice flowers on the grass. In the park, the river was largely frozen over, with great swirls of white on its glassy surface.


I wish I could also conjure up the crunching of frost too, the splintering of ice - or the strange mewling of the deer as they crossed the track in front of us. The shrieking of crows stark in the frozen air.





That sun with its long reach and misted light is already dipping as the solstice day approaches. So tantalisingly short.

I'm hoping to get some hibernating time this week to catch up on writing too. Especially a sequence I'm writing about Shackleton's voyage to Antarctica.

Certainly - I couldn't ask for more inspiring conditions for a Polar Poet! Time to pull on another cardigan and get out the notebooks.

Midsummer Marathon

Notes from a Long Distance Poet

Friday 2nd July 7.49am

A blessedly cool morning as I set off for our first Polar Poets expedition proper. We've had a frantic week of rehearsing and prepping – well, not so much frantic as excited anticipation. Yesterday the powerpoint show of arctic images all went pear-shaped as my computer declared it a 'corrupted file' – not as bad as being stranded in a blizzard with rotten supplies, I guess. But it kept me up till midnight last night putting together a rescue package. That and packing a bag of props: sari, lasso, clipboard, woolly hats, reindeer … And now for the slow train to North Wales.

You can read how this polar venture turned out on my sister blog:

http://polarpoets.blogspot.com/2010/07/arctic-ulating-in-wrexham.html

Sunday 4th July

More reflections later on the particular pleasure of collaborating with another performer like Susan Richardson. But right now I'm in the midst of a midsummer marathon of festivals. Friday was the Wrexham Science Festival, a very inspiring place for a poet to be, and next comes the Ledbury Poetry Festival on Wednesday - where I'll be performing alongside an auroral physicist! So a whole different kind of collaboration. Today I'm tweaking the powerpoint show we did at the National Space Centre gig and slipping in a few more poems. Here's hoping the technical stuff is better-behaved today. My tech. support is under a tent at a Bluegrass festival right now ...

Summer Ice

Well, summer has finally kicked in and I'm already melting like a freckled candle. Things are also hotting up on the performance front as I'm busy preparing for three summer festivals in as many weeks. I'm just hoping that the Arctic theme will keep me cool! This week it's off to Cardiff and the University of Leicester for planning meetings and then lots of rehearsing. I love this phase of creating the shows and I'm particularly looking forward to working with Susan Richardson on our first ever Polar Poets gig. See: http://polarpoets.blogspot.com/

So you can catch one of my Northern Lights/ Arctic shows at:

Wrexham Science Festival 2010
Organisers say it '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.'

Siobhan Logan and Susan Richardson, the Polar Poets, will be presenting their new 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.

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/

Ledbury Poetry Festival 2010
The Guardian says ''This celebration of verse is the largest of its kind in the UK and also the most energised, giving a real sense of poetry as an important living, contemporary literary form.' The festival will present some top names in UK poetry, including Fleur Adcock, Mario Petrucci and Jenny Joseph, as well as international figures like the ' iconic American poet' Michael McClure. I will be appearing with a scientist from the University of Leicester in an exciting poetry/physics collaboration.

Dr. Darren Wright works for the University of Leicester's Radio & Space Plasma Physics Group who are 'at the forefront of research into the interaction of planetary environments with the solar wind.' Together, Logan and Wright will blend science, poetry and images of the aurora in Poetry and Physics Under the Northern Lights. This is based on a show they first staged at London's Science Museum in 2008 and in February this year at the National Space Centre in Leicester. Audience members said it was ''Good for the brain and good for the soul!' and 'This show really brought out the WOW! factor in astro-physics.'

Wednesday 7th July 2010
8.30pm - 10pm, 7 July. Market Theatre, Ledbury. £8
Box office: 0845 458 1743
http://www.poetry-festival.com/index.html

And a week later at the Southwell Poetry Festival 2010

Organised by Southwell Libraries and boasting 'a fantastic line-up of big names' this year such as Michael Rosen, Andrew Motion, Jo Shapwell and Don Patterson, Southwell's Poetry Festival is 'fast becoming a major highlight in the region’s cultural calendar'.

With the aid of music and images, Siobhan Logan will conjure up the arctic wilderness, its people and the magic of the aurora borealis in her own show, Firebridge to Skyshore: A Northern Lights' Journey.

Tuesday 13th July
7.30pm - 9pm
Southwell Library
Tickets £5
Bookings by phone: 01636 812 148
By email:southwell.library@nottscc.gov.uk
www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/home/leisure/libraries/poetryfestival

Somewhere in this whirl of festivities, I'll be blogging to let you know how it's all going ...

Polar Poet at Holmfield Primary

Just back from a lovely morning trekking across the Arctic with the kids from Holmfield Primary. You can't ask for a better warm-up act than a headmaster with a puppet. My thanks to David Lloyd for that. The tots on the front row were shrieking with excitement at an assembly where a long-serving Premises Officer, one Graham Gummage, was presented with the Golden Screwdriver. A hard act to follow ...

When the dust had settled, I was left with 2 classes of 7 - 9 year olds waiting to see the Polar Poet in action. They seemed impressed with my thermal vest - 'really warm' - they agreed. Knew about the volcanoes of Iceland. And were definitely up for some Arctic Warming-up exercises. But they really took off when we did my 'Auroral Football' poem together. In World Cup Week, all the kids were primed for the football chants and lifted the roof when I reached 'and now he SCORES!' I also had some very able 'frost giants' to hold up my magical 'Firebridge' ( a sparkling green sari).

We went on to learn how to say 'hello' in Saami, how many seasons reindeer have and why Rudolf was really 'a girl'! Once shuffled into pairs and threes, they had a pretty good crack at the Reindeer Quiz with some excellent guesses. I ran out of time to take them on a mass reindeer migration but they listened very attentively to the Mansy legend (from Siberia) of the White Reindeer. Another flying, talking reindeer all-rounder. Asked about 'ice melt', someone was immediately able to explain about greenhouse gases - I was impressed - and we explored how climate change is affecting animals of the arctic. The Snow Queen had the last word in 'The Last Legend of the North' and then we were ready for a half-time munch.

They'd been very enthusiastic and involved in the poetry performance but I was even more impressed with their storywriting session. After break, they got to name their own White Reindeer and we talked about what it would feel like to fly for the first time. What does the earth look like so far below? The people are like ants, they said, and cars are like 'mini-beetles'. One boys said the people below looked like 'tiny crumbs'. Another one worked in words like 'tundra' and 'flickering lights'. There were beautiful descriptions of the stars 'blasting light' and the many colours of the Northern Lights. And some lively snippets of dialogue between the talking reindeer and his/ her human friend.

Where did their aerial arctic journeys take them? To the South Pole, to outer space and Mars (whose surface is brown like chocolate) and to the World Cup. We didn't get to hear which team the deer was supporting. Can we guess? For myself I can only hope their imagination was fired in the way mine was when I first read the story of the Snow Queen and Gerda's strange and perilous journey. How could I know back then that stories like that would later take me all the way to the Arctic Circle and back? I look forward very much to receiving some promised letters from the Holmfield kids who proved to be excellent companions for my latest expedition.

postscript:

and here are the letters which I loved. They show how much the kids used their imaginations and how they really engaged with the writing too, including these letters to the Polar Poet.


'I loved the brige of fire. I also liked the way the poems were said. The way the poems were acted. Now that's what I call Polar Poem DRAMA!'

'The one thing that I enjoyed with her was writting and learning. + especially loning about the norern lites, that was magical!!!'

'Thank you for coming to Holmfield and teaching us all about the North pole! I liked it when you showed us the Northern Lights, the Snow Queen, The Reindeers and the reindeer story. When we had to get into partners, I really enjoyed it.'

'The children in my class loved it. They thort that your were Beautifull. I loved the football poem.'

'And I like the football and all of ower class like the polar poet ... you have been so friendly to us.'

and some lovely comments from their teacher too:

'The children thoroughly enjoyed the visit. They found the stories of visits to the Arctic, and tales related to the Northern Lights fascinating. The poetry was wonderful and the children enjoyed the audience participation element ... It really opened up their world.'

(Holmfield Teacher)

Polar Poets Summer Gig

NEWSFLASH !! !

First ever Polar Poets gig now Booked for this summer's festival - see:

http://polarpoets.blogspot.com/2010/03/polar-poets-at-wrexham.html


see my sister blog for more details on the adventures of the 2 intrepid Polar Poets - myself and Susan Richardson - as we bring our new show Arctic-ulate to science festivals and other venues this year.

can't wait now to start rehearsals - somewhere in the ether between Wales and the Midlands ....

Polar Snaps & Snippets

Well, I was all blogged out by last Friday after a week-long launch of our Polar Poets blogpage. It was fun thinking of new items to fill each day with and we were very pleased with the number of visitors we got and particularly, the people who posted comments and entered our competitions. Now we just have to live up to the launch!

You might like to take a look at the interview with Susan Richardson, my fellow Polar Poet, or the one she did with me. We got to share some of the secrets of our separate journeys to arctic regions. There's also a couple of our poems to sample - and piccies of course - plus captions from our guests.

As for me, I'm already getting nostalgic for the snow. I can't believe it's only 9 days ago I was tramping around in it. And I thought I would revive the mood by posting some of the photos I snapped on that magical walk around my local park. If I wasn't snowblind, I was certainly mesmerised by the long tree shadows it threw, mapping the ground with ghost branches and a maze of boot tracks.

So much of the news has reported this as 'bad weather', a catastrophe we've battled through with a 'Blizzard Spirit'. Yet it seems to me we only get to experience this kind of deep winter landscape once in a few decades, if that. And so I hoard every rumour of returning snow, every morning of frost-crusted rooves. Don't even mention spring ...

Footsteps into the White

White roofs but no snow. I'm dreaming of Iceland - February hopefully - now that my appetite has been whetted by the Christmas flurries. It's surely time for another journey to the High North. I can't wait.

All my reading this Christmas has been ice-bound and thermally insulated. I've just finished a thick, heavy wildlife book on 'ANTARCTICA Exploring a Fragile Eden' by Jonathon & Angela Scott (Collins). This wonderful book weaves accounts of whales, wandering seabirds, penguins and seals with stories of polar exploration from the indomitable Captain Cook and later Shackleton, Amundsen and Scott through to modern scientific research bases on the white continent. The impact of whaling and the fur seal trade is set out in painful detail along with the pressures of climate change on polar eco-systems and the prospects for the future. And it's illustrated with a treasure-hoard of stunning photographs and beautiful drawings. A book to lose yourself in without having to wonder where the blizzard blew your tent to or whether the frostbite is turning nasty.

It's New Year's Day and I see that this blog is nearly reaching it's birthday. And blogging, Facebooking and lately Twittering, have all kept me busy this year. But a review of my calendar also told me that I'd packed in far more workshops and courses than I remembered, learning about the job of writing from the likes of Liz Lochead, John Gallas, Mimi Khalvati, Jean Binta Breeze and the editors of Smiths Knoll, as well as a collection of publishers, agents and industry professionals. So that's all helped.

And the past few months have been packed with meetings to get new projects off the ground, in particular two exciting collaborations for 2010. In January, we hope to launch the Polar Poets, a twinning of myself and Susan Richardson, to take our poetry about the arctic around the country. Look out for an on-line launch soon ... And in February, I get to join film-maker Brian McClave and my sponsors, scientists Stan Cowley and Darren Wright of Leicester University, to present an evening show, the Northern Lights Spectacular, at the dramatic venue of our National Space Centre.

2009 was a year in which I enjoyed sharing stories of the Northern Lights with very diverse audiences, from primary school children to writers, astronomers and festival-goers. It's been wonderful to get to meet people who are so enthusiastic about the material. The aurora certainly continues to work its magic. And this will also be remembered as the year I got the thrill of my own book Firebridge to Skyshore - A Northern Lights Journey (Original Plus Press) arriving in the post. It's an extraordinary feeling, to hold the first book and hear the crinkle of the pages. I look forward to seeing how 2010 is going to top that one!

A White Weekend?

Today I trekked up through the fog and spooky tree lines of Victoria Park to see Stan Cowley and Darren Wright of the Radio & Space Plasma Physics Group at the University of Leicester. It's a familiar route by now because since they first sponsored my poetry project on the Northern Lights back in June 2007, we've enjoyed a no. of collaborations. In March 2008, Darren and I took part in a Northern Lights evening at the Science Museum in London. A sell-out event which was reprised in September last year. Now we're planning to bring that event to Leicester and where better than the dramatic Space Theatre in Leicester's own National Space Centre? The innovative film-maker, Brian McClave will be showing his spectacular 3-D films of both aurora and solar flares. And under that domed ceiling of the planetarium, we hope to recreate some of the magic of the Northern Lights, as we mix poetry, physics and film. Are you hooked yet?

At our planning meeting today, we were joined by Ather Mirza of the University's Press Office to think of ways of getting the word out there. We're dreaming up a blizzard of press releases, e-mails, tweets - you name it. And this weekend, I'll be busy on a design for the flyer. So here's the first flake ... It's fab, it's free and it's Tuesday 23rd February!

POLAR POETS GO ARCTIC

And continuing the arctic theme, I'll also be working on a webpage to launch another poetry adventure. In 2010, I'll be teaming up with poet, Susan Richardson, to form the Polar Poets. We're hoping to tour the country with multi-media performances, talks and workshops around the Arctic. She can offer Viking women, hardy Antarctic Explorers and penguins - I can throw in Saamis, scientists and reindeer. And together our material traverses the icy wastes of both poles.

Inevitably, our poems reflect on climate change in these regions. With the Copenhagen Summit on Climate Change opening this week, this theme has never seemed more urgent. You might ask what use is it for 2 poets to versify about melting icecaps. I can only say that 2 years ago, I went to Tromso in the Arctic Circle to see the Northern Lights for myself. And I think too I wanted to follow in the footsteps of the little girl in my favourite childhood story, The Snow Queen, and journey across the ice and snow. What I found was rain and darkness. They were experiencing summer temperatures in December. The same week we were there, a White House press conference announced the Polar Bear was a 'threatened' species facing possible extinction by as early as 2050. By this August, for the first time in human history, so much summer ice had melted at the North Pole, that it was an island. It seems impossible not to write about this. And the least the Polar Poets can do is celebrate the extraordinary beauty of this wilderness that we so depend on - while it is still within our power to conserve it. It's not enough, for sure - but it's one thing storytellers and poets can do.