'crossing latitudes with
the ache of the north tingling in my teeth
the jiggle of the needle gauging degrees
whenever I approach this white expanse'
(Expeditions)
As a child I was fascinated by stories of the North. I mean the Far North, the place of reindeer and polar bears, of icy wildernesses and the eerie Northern lights. This was the realm of ice witches like the Snow Queen, a role I relished playing on our school stage. The North of Ireland was my birthplace and I was a November baby. Maybe that started it. And then at the age of six I became a migrant so journeys figure too. When my family moved to the North of England, the second slice of my childhood began, exchanging the fox-haunt of Fermanagh lanes for the cobbled backstreets of Bolton in Lancashire.
My sister tells me I was always making up stories for them to be in. I had two brothers and two sisters - so a cast of thousands really. And playground games turned into plays my teachers let me stage for the whole school. My Bolton primary school, St. Osmund's, was a wonderful place, alive with music and art. The headmaster, a fiddle player himself, once suggested I should grow up to be a writer. Which is where I am now. Dividing my time between the 'day-job' of teaching English at Leicester College and the professional day-dreaming of the writer's trade.
Those imaginary journeys can take you to extraordinary places. In 2005, I was invited to write some poems about myths of the Northern Lights for the visual artist Jackie Stanley. I found a treasure trove of stories hoarded by indigenous peoples of the Arctic, from Siberian tribes to the Saamis of Finnmark and Inuits and Native Americans in Alaska. They inspired my poem sequence Colour Catchers. Becoming interested in the science of the lights too, I contacted a group of auroral scientists based at Leicester University. With sponsorship from the Radio & Space Plasma Physics Group, I was able to visit Tromso in North Norway. There I met a Saami reindeer herder, fed the reindeer and visited an auroral research base in the mountains. And finally, on a freezing star-flung night, I got to the see the Northern Lights for myself.
The poems I wrote, full of characters and voices from across the arctic, reignited a passion for performance. With the help of friends from the Leicester Writers' Club, a community of writers I belong to, I created a show called Stories Drummed to Polar Skies. We used lights, costume, music and images to bring these stories to life. I was also invited to perform my poems as part of an event about the Northern Lights at the Science Museum in London. Since then, my poems have featured on a DVD, on BBC local radio and in a Leicester primary school hall. And now in my first published book.
The quest to find and share these stories has taken me all the way to the Arctic Circle and beyond. Like Gerda chasing the Snow Queen, I've run with reindeer, eaten stockfish and gazed at the Northern Lights. And still, every morning in my study, the white page beckons...