Tuesday 12 January 2010

Poetic People (27): Polar Poets, Susan Richardson and Siobhan Logan


Deep and crisp and even...


Caroline (in Arbeia shirt) with Susan Richardson at the Hay Festival, 2009

Why not pack your snow boots and leki sticks away for an hour or so, and join two polar explorers on their cyberspace journey of writing?

Polar Poets, Susan Richardson and Siobhan Logan are launching their exciting new blog this week, with the evocative strapline 'making wordprints across the Arctic'.

Susan and Siobhan both have first-hand experience of Arctic regions, and hope in their writing 'to evoke the unique appeal of one of the planet's last great wildernesses'. Be sure to keep an eye open for their interviews, quizzes and poems. The site is enhanced by photographs of Greenland taken by Paul Lomatschinsky.

I first encountered Susan as my creative writing tutor when I took part in Disability Arts Cymru's project, The Write Stuff, in 2003. This enterprise led to the publication in 20o4 by Parthian of Hidden Dragons/Gwir a Grymus (I still love the name!), a ground-breaking anthology of 'New Writing by Disabled People in Wales', edited by Allan Sutherland and Elin ap Hywel.

Since those days Susan and I have kept in touch via our blogs, enjoying the occasional chance to meet up over literature, coffee ... or chips ('my one weakness'), in Cardiff and Hay.

I have mentioned Susan's wonderful poetry volume before. For a veritable marine menagerie I would recommend Creatures of the Intertidal Zone (scroll down the linked page), published by Cinnamon Press. The poet follows in the footsteps of Gudrid, an eleventh century 'Viking heroine'. Within the pages of the volume you will encounter not only seals and cetaceans, but other creatures like the hermit crab and - of course - a colony of penguins.

Remember to keep an eye open for those footprints in the snow...
Postcript: you might also like to see the ice and penguins on Professor P. Brain's Swansea ecology blog here.

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