The ghost below the waterline

Last year I was artist-in-residence on expeditions to Antarctica and the Canadian Arctic and Greenland, as well as aboard a ship crossing the Atlantic from Amsterdam to Quebec City.

Today, while digging through the old, tattered, yellowed, oily (and in places literally bloodstained) plans piled in the chief electrician’s cluttered office I discovered that the ship’s first name was Konstantin Simonov. Simonov was a Soviet-era Russian poet. How many ships are named after poets…?

My way into the arts was through poetry, via chemistry.

I completed a chemistry degree in 2013. After working various jobs for a few years, I started a PhD. This was when poetry invaded my life, upending it.