Disko Bay

by Nancy Campbell

The poems in Nancy Campbell's first collection transport the reader to the frozen shores of Greenland. The Arctic has long been a place of encounters, and Disko Bay is a meeting point for whalers and missionaries, scientists and shamans. We hear the stories of those living on the ice edge in former hunters, explorers and settlers, and the legendary leader Qujaavaarssuk. These poems relate the struggle for existence in the harsh polar environment, and address tensions between modern life and traditional ways of subsistence. As the environment begins to change, hunters grow hungry and their languages are lost. In the final sequence, Jutland, we reach the northern fringes of Europe, where shifting waterlines bear witness to the disappearing arctic ice.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, ebook

Published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

The translated poems in this collection are dark and terrifying, but the others are only light in comparison. A fantastic array. Can easily see why this was nominated for so prestigious an award!

[Louisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely shivery poems that made me very happy to be indoors with central heating, although I think I enjoyed the Greenlandic translations the most.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disko Bay, limpid and original, includes translations of songs from the Qavak dialect of Greenlandic, as well as poems about the landscapes of Greenland and its myths. Campbell uses free-verse, as well as formal rhythm and rhyme, including haunting and musical pantoums. The poems evoke the harshness of a landscape, where "The ice shelf bears the mark of sled and knife - // I see drops of blood and strange soft ochre things" and corpses are buried under stones. Myths mentioned include the umiarisaat, the seal people, who are the ghosts of seals who have been killed by hunters, and return to hunt the hunters' wives. But it is also a landscape of great beauty, where we are closer to the turning of the universe: in the beautiful sestina, 'The Hunter's Wife Becomes the Sun', we see the aurora:

Green candles
burn beyond the hills: the dead are dancing. The window
between the worlds grows thin. A solar wind blows its low tin whistle
and fire draws closer. Soon Earth will be a small white dwarf,
a revolving toy abandoned by its guardian angels.

Disko Bay gives us a sense of deep time, of the slow geology of the Earth, and how are lives are tiny moments in a great universe. By travelling to a harsh landscape, the author explores the fragility of human life, and shows how precious and tenuous our existence is. Though not directly referring to the environment, this book functions as a plea for change and for a respect for the delicate balance in which we live. It's also a hymn to the richness of Inuit lives and the beauty of Greenland. A subtle, surprising collection: recommended.

[scarlettraces · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Sanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for the collection in its entirety, five stars for part I. Those poems will stay with me and will be reread many times.