iceberg tea

by Annelies Pool

Annelies Pool lives in a cabin in the woods outside of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada and likes to sit around, preferably in her pyjamas, and think great thoughts while her husband does all the chores. For how can you be spiritual when all you want is a fancy red car? Why are Northerners so possessive about mosquitoes? Why would men rather think about gas fittings than the meaning of life? She's been publishing these thoughts as columns in northern publications for more than twenty years. This collection of columns will touch your heart and make you laugh. Reading them is like sitting down with an old friend over a cup of tea.

176 pages, Paperback

First published April 13, 2010

About the author

Born in The Netherlands, I immigrated to Canada with my family at a young age and grew up in southern Ontario. I came into my own in my twenties when I arrived in Hay River, Northwest Territories, at the tail end of a cross-Canada hitchhiking journey, and stumbled into a writing career. I had all my worldly possessions in a knapsack on my back, was broke and in need of a job. This materialized as soon as the publisher of a community weekly newspaper, the Hay River Tapwe, found out that I could type — all the qualifications necessary to be a reporter.

I fell in love with writing about the North and never made it back to the road. After several years in Hay River, I moved to the capital of the territory, Yellowknife. I grew up, got married and settled in an off-grid cabin, about 30 km outside of town, at Prelude Lake where I lived with my husband and my dogs for 22 years. I became well known as a northern journalist and freelance writer, serving as editor for a number of publications, including the Northern News Services newspaper chain in Yellowknife and the inflight magazine, above&beyond, Canada’s Arctic Journal. I published stories, columns and editorials in more than 30 periodicals and anthologies.

The beautiful landscape of Prelude Lake nurtured my creativity and inspired me to explore more creative forms of writing. Ever since I began writing for newspapers, I had published creative non-fiction in the form of funny personal columns. In 2010, I published a collection of these columns in my first book, Iceberg Tea, under my own imprint Prelude Books.

My journey from journalist to creative writer was also nurtured by NorthWords NWT, an organization that supports northern and aboriginal writers by holding an annual writers’ festival in Yellowknife, workshops and other literary events. I was privileged to serve as president and then executive director of NorthWords for five years, helping to support northern writers and being supported by them in turn.

Today, I have put the off-grid life behind me and am back in Yellowknife where I enjoy such delights as water running out of the tap instead of having to be hauled from the lake; doing laundry without having to start a generator; using an electric toaster; an electric fridge; a microwave and all sorts of other appliances we didn’t know how to operate when we first moved in.

In between periods of basking in my new world of luxury, I have been hard at work finishing my first novel, Free Love, the story a young alcoholic woman, Marissa, who struggles to stop drinking and build a new life for herself. I am delighted to say that Free Love was released in early 2016.

Now for the next adventure, literary and otherwise …

Reviews

[Gypsykat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought/read this while i was living in Yellowknife (for a year), so that made it special for me. I truly enjoyed this book. It's been a while since i read it so i can't recall details, other than the fact that i found it humorous and that it made me want to head towards the Arctic Ocean (i love this wonderful vast country of ours!) and have some iceberg tea for myself! :-)

[Amberlee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Iceberg Tea is such a treat! Annelies Pool, with her first book of 'essays of an ordinary life nurtured by a northern landscape' has succeeded in penning a delightfully amusing and whimsically eccentric accounting of life north of the 60th parallel.

[Tracee · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5* The book started out well, I was excited to continue reading about the author’s adventures. But as it turned out, there weren’t really many adventures to be had. At all. Most of the book ended up being a dull, dated musings of a middle-aged woman stuck in Yellowknife so it ended up not being interesting at all. Undoubtedly this is a compilation of columns written for the local newspaper so a few people in town must have got a kick out of them at the time.

[JennLynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of articles and anecdotes about living in the Canadian north. Despite our different settings, I have a lot in common with Annelies. We're both avid readers, appreciate the simple things in life - even both drove a Geo Tracker (now that's pretty rare). It was wonderful reading her down-to-earth essays on the ordinary things in life that are really the most important things of all. I'd definitely love to sit down with her anytime for a cup of iceberg tea. B+

[Cheryl Harrington · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved it! Back in the day, I had dreams of living off the grid and off the land. It didn't happen for me (probably a good thing, turns out I'm a city girl), but this collection of stories gave me a taste of what might have been. The author writes with such humour and obvious love for the land, people, and creatures of Canada's north, I closed the book feeling I'd made a new friend. Absolutely must have a cup of Iceberg Tea some day, properly boiled, of course!

[Annelies Pool · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say? I wrote this! Some days I love it. Some days I hate it.