Erebus

By Elizabeth Lewis Williams

In 1958, geophysicist A. G. Lewis travelled to the Antarctic to investigate the landscapes and skies of that vast and icy continent.
Now Elizabeth Lewis Williams traces her father's journeys, from the Peninsula to Mt Erebus. They are real, imagined, and artistic journeys, exploring communication across time and space, and experiments in scientific and poetic measure.
Erebus transports us to an Antarctic of paradox. A land where perpetual daylight balances months of austral darkness. A land of encounters with the unknown, and with mortality – but where camaraderie and faith are the only defence against catastrophe.
At its heart, Erebus is a visit to the frozen underworld, and an exploration of how we find a place for ourselves in this vast and often unforgiving world we call home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Story Machine
• Release date: Sep 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781912665266

Elizabeth Lewis Williams

Elizabeth Lewis Williams is a Norwich based writer and teacher. Currently Writer in Residence at the British Antarctic Survey, and part of the team bringing ‘Deception Island’ to life as an immersive installation in a replica Antarctic hut, she is an advocate for the importance of writing and storytelling in education, and for the way in which understanding human engagement in Antarctica can deepen our understanding of our place on the planet. After years teaching in schools, she completed an MA and PhD in Creative Writing at UEA where she is an Associate Tutor.

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‘A beautifully musical meditation on time, place and dwelling.’

Jacob Polley

‘In precise, luminous language, Elizabeth Lewis Williams has written an Antarctic symphony-in-verse. She perfectly captures the daily struggles of living on the continent, pitched against its epic grandeur, revealing the many personae of Antarctica.’

Jean McNeil

‘Brilliant. There is a glittering quality to Erebus. It is full of wonders, from the sublime to the down-to-earth.’

Moniza Alvi

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The text of Erebus is copyright © Elizabeth Lewis Williams, 2022

Images copyright Estate of A.G. Lewis, BAS Archives Ref. 2015/24

Print ISBN: 9781912665259

Ebook ISBN: 9781912665266

Published by Story Machine

130 Silver Road, Norwich, NR3 4TG;

www.storymachines.co.uk

Elizabeth Lewis Williams has asserted her right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher or copyright holder.

This publication is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Set in Garamond.

Printed and bound in the UK by Seacourt Ltd.

Story Machine is committed to planet positive publishing. Our world is better off for every single book we print.

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Erebus

Elizabeth Lewis Williams

For

Ian, Max, Eleanor, and Sophie

with all my love

Preface

In October 1958 my father left Southampton on board the RRS Shackleton as an assistant scientific officer bound for the Antarctic. He had a rare heart condition, had been regularly withdrawn from school by his parents and, when he left, he possessed no official qualifications (though he had a letter from one of his headteachers testifying to his ability and excellent ‘moral character’.) He ended his time in Antarctica in 1965 as scientific leader at Scott Base, and on Tuesday 10th March 1970 was awarded a Polar Medal. On February 9th 1996, five months before my wedding, he died from a heart attack whilst clearing a pathway through the snow at home.

This collection began as a personal response to his then unpublished book Years on Ice which we, his children, did not know about until after his early death. The poems make up a kind of dialogue with the words he left behind, here and in letters to his parents, and in half-remembered stories. In the aftermath of loss, and the birth of my children, they were an attempt to speak back to someone who could no longer answer, to address my unreliable memory, and to recover the old Antarctic hero of my childhood. The poems also eventually provided me with a way of introducing my father to his grandchildren.

Those early poems remained unpublished, and when I came back to them years later, their dependence on my father’s words was clear; they lacked a felt sense of place. And here was a problem: how could I create on the page that remote, icy, fabled continent without an Antarctic experience of my own on which to draw?

I made contact with Ieuan Hopkins, the head archivist at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), and took him a small book of black and white negatives which had been left out of the collection of my father’s belongings which my mother had passed on. He helped me to scan the negatives onto the computer. At once it was like looking through