From the imagined world of the Greek philosophers to Māori stories of far-southern oceans, the idea of Antarctica has existed for centuries. The confirmation of its material reality is more recent. Claimed by several nations whose claims have been frozen, Antarctica is now governed by international treaty: a continent owned by no one, for which all are responsible.

Part of the journey of this issue has been reading across distance, grappling with the inadequacy of language to express the inexpressible, and articulate more than just human voices and timescales. The article ‘Towards a Wire-carrying Current’ documents a conversation that wrestles with precisely this, resulting in a hybrid form of its own. We are so grateful to be granted the use of South African photographer Jean Brundrit’s work, featured on the cover and inside the issue. Through these images made using an ice lens Brundrit poses the same question with her camera as so many of the poets do with their poems: How does ice see the world?

Moving beyond stories of the great heroic age of Antarctic exploration that have dominated thinking about the continent in the past, here the echoes and traces of such endurance exist alongside quotidian moments much closer to home – in a grandmother’s kitchen, for example, where the careful preparation of eggs calls to mind the way hen’s eggs from home were preserved as a treat for Midwinter’s Day on British stations in Antarctica. Much of our contemporary understanding of Antarctica is mediated through science. However, the specialist language can be difficult to access. Our feature ‘Breaking the Ice’ pairs six leading Antarctic scientists with six amazing young poets to bridge that gap through poetry.

The rhythms and observations of life on an Antarctic station are echoed in the short texts you will discover along the lower edge of many pages in this issue. These are excerpts from Island Days, an artwork by the artist and museum curator Adele Jackson, comprising handprinted text on 109 white postcards, one for each day she worked at Port Lockroy between November 2016 and March 2017. In keeping with the chronological concept of the artwork, the ‘postcards’ are placed like footsteps tracking across snow and ice honouring the narrative of human life they represent.

A site for industrial whaling and sealing, and testing ground of explorers and scientists, the perceived whiteness of Antarctica is complicated by its partially inhabited and politically contested reality. Its history is gendered and racialised, something explored in several poems, and in editor Branwell Roberts’ curated feature ‘Antarctic History: A Queer Herbarium’, seen through the poetic lens of moments in the life and work of Elke Mackenzie (1911–1990).

Relationship emerges as an important feature in so many poems: ties of friendship, parenthood, love of many different kinds. There are poems addressing Antarctica as a relative, poems that speak to icebergs or are voiced by glaciers. Like a patient with a mysterious condition, Antarctica is probed, measured, observed and recorded – we approach it with our questions, and strain to hear the answers.

There are also factual poems. Facts and instrumental language are part of the Antarctic experience and of its poetry. It is a continent where a mug of boiling water can be emptied into the air and fall in dazzling ice crystals. Take the word calving, for example, the scientific word for an ice mass breaking off a larger body of ice, a necessary process in a living glacier but one we associate with climate change, rising sea levels and loss. The word serves to animate the more than human in a vital way, containing as it does motherhood, childbirth, and the pleasure and pain of letting go.

When we opened the call-out for this issue, we encouraged poets to take us on a journey, not just to the ice, but to a hoped-for future and a place within. In the words of Keith Jarrett, our Inspired Poet, we dreamed we might still steer this ship towards some light… We are immensely proud to present the work in the following pages: a literary expedition with poetry the means of Antarctic discovery for us all.

 

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From Magma 96, The Antarctic 

 

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