I interviewed Andrew Motion, once. I didn't know much about him before the publisher sent me a book of his poems but I was immediately hooked. Ice manages to capture both the inhospitability and inhumanity of Arctic seas as well as the sense of adventure that drives explorers due north.
Ice by Andrew Motion
When friends no longer remembered,
the reasons we set forth,
I switched between nanny and tartar
driving us on north.
Will you imagine a human hand
welded by ice to wood?
And skin when they chip it off?
I don’t think you should.
By day the appalling loose beauty
of prowling floes:
lions’ heads, dragons, crucifix-wrecks,
and a thing like a blown rose.
By night the seething hiss
of killers cruising past -
the silence after each fountain-jet,
and our hearts aghast.
Of our journey home and the rest
there is nothing more to say.
I have lived and not yet died.
I have sailed in the Scotia Sea.
Stunning. So glad you have this other little gem of a blog here. I find as I get older I have a new appreciation of poetry. It's the whittling away, arranging and rearranging, getting down to the very essence that awes me.
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