Disko Bay

Shortlisted for the 2016 Forward Prize for best first collection

Shortlisted for the 2016 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize

‘A beautiful debut from a deft, dazzling and dangerous new poet writing from the furthest reaches of both history and climate change’ Carol Ann Duffy

The Arctic has long been a place of encounters, and Disko Bay on the west coast of Greenland is a meeting point for whalers and missionaries, scientists and shamans. These poems were composed during a winter as writer in residence at the most northern museum in the world on the island of Upernavik. They 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. The final sequence, Jutland, moves the reader to the northern fringes of Europe, where shifting waterlines bear witness to the disappearing arctic ice.

‘These poems’ spare, supple lines serve as indispensable guides in the unfamiliar visual and mythic landscape, a partnership reflected in the dual Greenlandic-English titles of many poems. Some are translations of Inuit verses, included in Enitharmon’s beautiful presentation to provide a sense of the original lyrics’ aural contours. Later pieces return us to an altered England, seen through Campbell’s eyes as lost outpost and distant relative of the deep north.’ Theophilus Kwek, in London Magazine

‘To the contemporary reader, what lies largely unspoken beneath these chilly, often curt, unsentimental chips off a mythic block is, of course, our own awareness the adverse effects of climate change.’ Martyn Crucefyx. Read the full review here.

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