Polar Corona

Polar Corona by Caroline Gill is a prize-winning crown of seven interlinked sonnets about Antarctic exploration and penguins. While some of Caroline’s sonnet patterns differ from those in John Donne’s prized sonnet crown, La Corona, the earlier poet’s influence is reflected in the general approach to form. Caroline’s first full collection, Driftwood by Starlight (The Seventh Quarry Press, 2021), explored themes relating to the fragility of the natural world. These issues are further represented here. Polar Corona began to take shape after a course-cum-residency in 2014 with the Poetry School (London) and the Scott Polar Research Institute and Polar Museum (University of Cambridge).

＂Caroline Gill has produced a beautifully crafted cycle of poems, in which the final line of each one is taken up by the next until the final poem brings us back to where we began, in a perfect round. These poems bring the Antarctic to life, a vast world of ice and snow, a world of astonishing loveliness, illuminated by the stars, and at the same time a world in which human beings and creatures such as penguins live out a perilous existence. To most of us, sitting by our fires, this is a world that we will never experience; and yet in these steady lines and brilliant images, we can come closer to the wonder of creation, and marvel at the endurance of hardship, and the fascination with a world that causes people to live and die in these inhospitable places. To read these poems is to be confronted with a terrifying beauty, and with courage in its purest form.＂

- Professor J. R. Watson, University of Durham

＂In Polar Corona, Caroline Gill offers a vivid and precise depiction of Antarctica’s landscape and wildlife, especially the seasonal rhythms of penguins’ lives, interwoven with a poignant exploration of human fortitude in this most testing of environments. Her marvellous ear for the music of a poem is evident throughout and the intricate pattern of mostly half rhymes cleverly accentuates the pervading sense of risk and unpredictability. This is an assured and compelling sequence of sonnets with Gill’s characteristic mastery of traditional forms on glorious display.＂

- Susan Richardson Author of Where the Seals Sing (William Collins, 2022) and Words the Turtle Taught Me (Cinnamon Press, 2018), shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award

＂When we introduce people to objects, artworks and archives in our polar collections, they are transported to a time and place far removed from our museum in Cambridge. In Caroline Gill’s evocative Polar Corona, she closes the distance and brings the ’heroic age’ of polar exploration to life. Her words open a window in our imaginations directly onto Antarctica’s remote sights and sounds.＂

- Dr. Charlotte Connelly Former Museum Curator, The Polar Museum, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge