Approaching Ice
Elizabeth Bradfield

Finalist for the James Laughlin Award from The Academy of American Poets

This collection portrays the gripping history of polar exploration by channeling its most notable figures — Symmes, Mawson, Scott, Cherry-Garrard, Byrd, and Shackleton among them. From their perspectives and her own, Elizabeth Bradfield relays the wonders and dangers, physical and mental, encountered while endeavoring to reach the earth's least-hospitable regions.

“In her vivid, unsentimental poetry, Bradfield is both chronicler and active lover, braiding across the pages the gloss-ice strands of history, landscape and personal longing.”
—Linda Bierds

“Approaching Ice chilled me and warmed me. It got me up walking around and thinking a million things, and threw me back down to read more. It’s a high latitude book, a storm, a soundless daybreak at the end of the world, an exquisite investigation into why we explore. I loved it.”
—Kim Heacox, author of Shackleton: The Antarctic Challenge

Elizabeth Bradfield is the author of Interpretive Work, winner of the Audre Lorde Prize and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Her poems have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, and many other publications. As a naturalist, she has worked in Alaska, the Eastern Canadian Arctic, and elsewhere. She lives on Cape Cod.

Paperback / $16.95 / ISBN 978-0-89255-355-6 / 112 pages / Poetry