Writer Chris Epting uses the haiku format to express his polar experiences. I can understand why. Gushing to anyone who will listen – and those who do not want to – about Antarctica or the Arctic is a first response inevitability. But there comes a time, when a visitor to the polar regions searches for the essence of the emotion of the experience. That is the moment when less becomes more.
I have been writing about the polar regions for more than seven years. In a year when centenaries are the norm, seven years is insignificant. I expect I’ll be writing about the north and south polar regions for the rest of my life. I have yet to express my deepest feelings with the precision they demand.
My quest to uncover polar poetry has led to the following links:
- Claire Beynon – Thin Ice: Poems from Antarctica
- Bernadette Mayer – The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica
- Bonny Cassidy – The Australian poet speaks, January 24, 2012 – Her subject? Antarctica
- Derek Mahon – 694. Antarctica
- Robert W. Service – Death in the Arctic
- Emily Dickinson – As if Some Little Arctic Flower
- Vicente Huidobro – Arctic Poems
I was flabbergasted to discover that Emily Dickinson wrote something with an arctic aspect. I should not have been. Dickinson lived during that period of Arctic history when the Royal Navy searched for Sir John Franklin and his lost expedition. That event permeated English society like the aroma of roses on a summer’s evening.
If you want a sneak peek at Chris Epting’s polar haiku, you’ll have to join Facebook. You’ll have to scroll some, but you’ll find bite size pieces of his heart’s polar song.
