‘The Ice Sonnets’ - a poetic odyssey

The Ice Sonnets: A poetic odyssey into the frozen South  

For any writer, white space has a special allure.

To me, the frozen desert of Antarctica was the ultimate blank page, and I couldn’t resist making my own mark.

I feel sure Shackleton, as both an explorer and writer himself felt the same way at the beginning of the 20th century.

One by one, the great trophies of polar exploration had been claimed – first the North Pole by the Americans, Robert Peary and Matthew Henson in 1909, and then the South Pole, by the Norwegian, Roald Amundsen in 1912, famously pipping Captain Scott to the post by a mere three months.

Shackleton was not easily put off. He set his sights on an equally eye-catching, but even more demanding, prize: to be the first to cross the continent from Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea.

An astonishing plan

Sixty nine dogs and fourteen men would be put ashore from the Endurance, including six to undertake the whole crossing itself. They would trek a gruelling 1,800 miles to reach the other side, taking a route via the South Pole. Once past the pole, they would pick up supplies from depots laid by a party landing on the Ross Sea side.

So much for the plan. Famously, the Endurance became trapped in the ice, and Shackleton did not so much set foot on Antarctica. Instead, he led an astonishing escape home, which is told through the sonnets.

A return to Antarctica

Like so many of Shackleton’s crew (and Shackleton himself) this was a poetic return to Antarctica. In 2017, Templar poetry published my collection ‘The Penguin Diaries’ which told the story of Captain Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition, 1911-13. Unusually, I did this through 65 sonnets – one for each member of the party.

I’ve taken the same approach here. There is a sonnet for each member of the Ross Sea and Weddell Sea Parties. There’s also one for other players in the drama, such as Lady Shackleton, holding the family together in England while her husband was away; one for Chilean sea captain, Luis Pardo who rescued Shacketon’s men from Elephant Island, where they were marooned, and even one for the Endurance herself, which was discovered at the bottom of the Weddel Sea in 2022.

Why sonnets?

The sonnet felt the right form for several reasons. It’s concise enough to demand compression and precision, while allowing for plenty of white space around it to breathe on the page. It’s also the perfect medium for both description and reflection. Each one is addressed to the subject itself, creating an intimacy and connection  

To help the reader, and to provide an additional focal point, I made the decision to sketch the subjects of the poems, mostly using soft, 4B, 5B, 6B and 7B pencils. Creating over forty portraits was a tall order (and my desk was soon smudged with pencil lead and littered with shavings). I’m primarily a writer, so this was perhaps even more of a challenge than writing the poems. However, the process allowed me to probe deeper into the psyche of each subject, which in turn informed the writing.

In Gena and David at Dithering Chaps, I found the perfect publishing team. They’ve believed in the project all the way – allowing plenty of time and space to think through the treatment, layout, cover. A special thank you to Jamie for the magnificent cover (a better artist than I) and to Karen May, for her long encouragement for this project – although all inaccuracies, of course, remain my own. 

I hope you enjoy this adventure into the bitter cold of Antarctica, and savour some of the magic of the frozen south.