::mslexia new writing::

New writing
ICE

Guest Editor LIZ LOCHHEAD introduces her pick of poetry and prose on the theme of ice

ICE. Wintry words and frozen worlds. When Mslexia told me the theme on inviting me to edit this issue’s New Writing section it was a clincher. I thought yes, I’d like to go there, read these pieces. Well, I was in mid-rehearsal at the time with a new production, yet another obsessive rewrite, of Blood and Ice, my first-ever play, one first written nearly 25 years ago – which is about Mary Shelley and her chilly relationship with her own creativity, with her creature, Frankenstein. So I had to admit that such a theme, clichéd or not, was certainly right up my street. As writers, I don’t think we should be afraid in advance that something may be a cliché. A cliché has usually grown out of a deep universal truth, then, unexamined, has been trotted out, becoming hackneyed. Of course you can’t use one raw. It’ll need to be twisted, refreshed, subjected to a rigorous ruthless emotional truthfulness.

I’m sure this goes for very many of you too, but I have always been particularly in thrall to a wintry Gothic. Ever since – and I was in love with even the flinty Nordic triplet of his name – Hans Christian Andersen’s Ice Queen first drove that sliver of ice into my heart with the shock of fear and of truth. Ever since I opened the library book and the girls of the Chalet School first braved the glacier. (Funny how I remember nothing about the characters, just the author’s contrarily hot name, Angela Brazil, and the landscape, the snowy jagged Alps.) Ever since my tomboy self thrilled to the sound of the wolves in a rattling Jack London adventure…. Ever since I listened to ‘Hans Brinker and The Silver Skates’ on Children’s Hour on the wireless in the deep dreariness of the pre-teatime dark of the midwinter afternoon. Perhaps my wee sister’s nappies steamed dismally on the fireguard as the fire smoked yellow and smelly, nevertheless out in my imagination I could speedskate, swoop silver and cut figure eights on the ice in the clean cold of Holland.

I think of other more recent passions. For Jenny Diski’s brilliantly original combination of travelogue and unflinching memoir Skating To Antarctica. Think of Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow; of David Gutterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars; of the snowbound Ontario of so many of my favourite Alice Munro stories. On the radio I’ve been riveted daily by a recent serialised Book of the Week, the true story of the cut-off Alaskan town of Nome and the husky race through blizzards across the frozen sea with diphtheria serum to contain an outbreak. I think again of the Arctic end of Frankenstein, the race, the chase, the Creature’s sled finally disappearing into snowy darkness and mist.

For the complete essay, and for Liz' full selection of poetry and prose on the theme of ice, read issue 20 • Subscribe!

Read a poem chosen by
Liz Lochhead:

Icemakers
by Alison Binney

For more on LIZ LOCHHEAD, go to www.contemporarywriters.com