'Polar Corona', my prize-winning poetry pamphlet on Antarctica

 

I am excited to say that I have just received advance copies of Polar Corona, my prize-winning 'crown-of-sonnets' poetry pamphlet, published by the Hedgehog Poetry Press.  

 

For further details: click here. 

 

From the blurbs:

“In Polar Corona, Caroline Gill offers a vivid and precise depiction of Antarctica’s landscape and wildlife, especially the seasonal rhythms of penguins’ lives, interwoven with a poignant exploration of human fortitude in this most testing of environments. Her marvellous ear for the music of a poem is evident throughout and the intricate pattern of mostly half rhymes cleverly accentuates the pervading sense of risk and unpredictability." 

 – Susan Richardson, Author of Where the Seals Sing (William Collins, 2022) and Words the Turtle Taught Me (Cinnamon Press, 2018), shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 

“Caroline Gill has produced a beautifully crafted cycle of poems, in which the final line of each one is taken up by the next until the final poem brings us back to where we began, in a perfect round. These poems bring the Antarctic to life, a vast world of ice and snow, a world of astonishing loveliness, illuminated by the stars, and at the same time a world in which human beings and creatures such as penguins live out a perilous existence."

– Professor J. R. Watson, University of Durham 

  

“When we introduce people to objects, artworks and archives in our polar collections, they are transported to a time and place far removed from our museum in Cambridge. In Caroline Gill’s evocative Polar Corona, she closes the distance and brings the ‘heroic age’ of polar exploration to life. Her words open a window in our imaginations directly onto Antarctica’s remote sights and sounds.”

– Dr Charlotte Connelly, Former Museum Curator, The Polar Museum, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge

 

'Polar Corona' ... today is 'Cover Reveal Day'

 

My super-slim prize-winning poetry pamphlet, Polar Corona, has nearly reached publication. It's almost 'touch down' time for the penguin. You can read a bit more by clicking here. And meanwhile, I hope you like the cover. 

First Prize (Publication)

 

Sign on the Scottish island of Gigha

After a tricky ten days, it was a real boost to hear that I had won First Prize in the 'Wee Collection' Challenge, set last November by Mark Davidson of the Hedgehog Poetry Press. This means that my sequence of seven interlinked sonnets will be published as a slim pamphlet. 

Watch this space!  

In other news, I very much enjoyed taking part in the ACW-Trellis online poetry day last Saturday. Participating poets came from England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Albania. I read 'Dunwich in Winter' from my 2021 collection, Driftwood by Starlight (The Seventh Quarry Press).   

'Poems for a Liminal Age'

My poem, 'Weddell Seal at the Ice Edge' has been accepted for a new anthology, Poems for a Liminal Age. The book will be edited by Mandy Pannett and published by SPM Publications (Sentinel Poetry Movement). Profits will support Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

• Weddell Seals (National Geographic)
• James Weddell, Antarctic explorer

Scott Polar Research Institute (Cambridge) and The Poetry School online eBook

Some of the poems we wrote earlier this year during the collaborative project between the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, and The Poetry School, are now online. They can be found on The Poetry School Campus site in an eBook entitled Sharpened into Absence, produced by Julia Bird of The Poetry School.

Thank you, Julia, for your hard work in preparing the publication.

Thank you to all who made this unique course not only possible but enjoyable, riveting, challenging and more besides.

I read my two poems, 'Chattermarks' and 'Pepys Island', yesterday evening at our local Poetry Cafe ...


Postscript
Julia adds a word about viewing the eBook online ...

'To view the book full screen, click the four arrow icon at the right of the grey toolbar at the bottom, and then you can make the print bigger or smaller by moving the slider between the ‘-‘ and ‘+’ magnifying glass icons.'

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...

• Creatures of the Intertidal Zone (poem) by Susan Richardson on the Sea Stories site.
• Be sure to visit Susan Richardson's amazing website.

Postcript: you might also like to see the ice and penguins on Professor P. Brain's Swansea ecology blog here.