In Ice" Gillian Clarke turns to the real winters of 2009 & 2010. In their extremity they redefined all the seasons for her. Nature asserted itself & renewed the environment for the imagination. The poem " Polar" is the poets point de repere evoking a polar-bear rug she had as a child & here resurrects in a spirit of personal & ecological longing that becomes a creative act. She lives with the planet its seasons & creatures in a joyful anxious communion. The book also
Includes:: the asked for & commissioned poems & the " Guardian" spreads Clarke has written during her time as National Poet of Wales (2008-2013). She follows in the rich millennium-old Welsh tradition of occasional writing going back to the first-known named British poets Aneirin & Taliesin in the sixth century."