Has there ever been a literary journal dedicated solely to Antarctica? If so, it has escaped our thorough Antarctic and literary experience. Welcome to IceTongue, the southernmost literary journal on Earth, and the first place for new fiction and poetry for the seventh continent.
Mon 20 Feb 2006
Ice Tongue is proud to announce the winner of the inaugural Ice Tongue McMurdo Station Poetry Contest: two poems by Claire Beynon.
Winners of the Inaugural McMurdo Station Fiction Contest will be published in our Winter Solstice Issue, June 21, 2006.
Fri 10 Feb 2006
Poetry by Kathleen Heideman
We are curious by nature, curious—yet find we yearn for something we already know:
at the end of the Taylor Valley, sunlight outlines every detail, but there’s no “human scale” –
nevertheless, we find ourselves sizing up each glacier — Hello? — appraising each dome of snow,
Fri 10 Feb 2006
Or A Short Summary the Heroic Era of British Antarctic Exploration
Poetry by Helen Paul
When men were men they starved and died
Or froze or larked about and made
Adventures, fraught with science, merely to have tried
Fri 10 Feb 2006
Poetry by Jeff Klein
Consider the Hadley Cell,
In which warm and moist air rises; travels
From the equator to a latitude
Fri 10 Feb 2006
Poetry by Bill Jirsa
The specimen informs: love is a floating point, no meaning except in things, time equals loss. Of course we may be wrong in detail.
This sample was found in Antarctica as two individual pieces which fit perfectly,
Fri 10 Feb 2006
Poetry by Jack Harris
Although surrounded, I am alone
This work is for the young
Who do not have the fear
Fri 10 Feb 2006
Poetry by Bill Manhire
Read by Sir Edmund Hillary at Scott Base, 28 November 2004, at a commemorative service to mark the 25th anniversary of the Erebus tragedy, when all 257 passengers and crew on Air New Zealand flight TE109 died on the slopes of Mount Erebus.
Fri 10 Feb 2006
Fiction by Karen Joyce
The propane toilet exploded as a group of Distinguished Visitors are due to visit her field camp, and Doctor Kristine Hartwood has just learned that their escort happens to be her academic rival and former mentor. This field season, she will have to settle their tangled past. The first chapter of a novel-in-progress set in the McMurdo Dry Valleys.
Fri 10 Feb 2006
Fiction by Gavin Tierney
Ian lit one cigarette from another. His black hair was pulled back underneath a gray bandana. The song ended, permitting conversation in the bar to continue. “Antarctica was never meant to exist man.” Ian sat back in his chair, his hands raised into the air.
Fri 10 Feb 2006
Fiction by Bill Jirsa
I’m drinking beside an ichthyologist. I can smell the whiskey on his breath when he leans over to talk above the noise in the bar. He smells like a memory of my grandfather: fish and bourbon.
Fri 10 Feb 2006