Helen Bailey’s poem ‘Ice bound’ was inspired by fragments of texts on wood engraving, natural history and Arctic exploration. It developed out of an exercise in cut-up poetry, at our creative writing workshop on seascapes and the Arctic, held in the Prints and Drawings department of the British Museum on 3rd December 2016. The texts that were used are listed below the poem.
Source texts:
John Jackson and William Andrew Chatto, A Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical (London: Bentley, 1839)
Albert Hastings Markham, The Great Frozen Sea (London: Daldy, Isbister, 1878)
Fridtjof Nansen, Hubert Majendie Gepp, The First Crossing of Greenland (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
John George Wood, The natural history of man; being an account of the manners and customs of the uncivilized races of men (London: Routledge, 1868-70)