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Finding poetry in the Northern Lights<\/h2>\n\n
Caroline Burrows on the verses that captured the sky-spectacle down the ages<\/p>\n\n
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<\/figure><\/div>\n\nThis winter, I\u2019ll be teaching poetry north of Inverness in Cromarty, best-known for its lighthouse and as a sea area in the Shipping Forecast. Its beacon of light no longer shines, but what I hope to see at night instead are the shimmering greens, pinks and reds of the Northern Lights. <\/p>\n\n
I almost saw them once when on the Isle of Lewis. My phone app alerted me to visible solar activity, so I got out of bed, went outside with my coat on over my pyjamas, and was met by a thick blanket of clouds. Mentions of the Northern Lights in poetry have proved elusive too. Nevertheless, when they appear, they span time and distance in mystical, magical or haunting settings. <\/p>\n\n
I find them in 19th-century North America, where transcendentalist Walt Whitman muses on the meaning of life in his 1880 poem, \u2018A Riddle Song\u2019: <\/p>\n\n
Rich as a sunset on the Norway coast, the sky, the islands, and the cliffs, <\/em> I return over the Atlantic to a Scottish mother writing about the loss of life. In \u2018To AHJ\u2019, published in 1918, Violet Jacob describes the landscape of home, far from where her son Harry died at the Somme: <\/p>\n\n On Angus, in the autumn nights, <\/em> I sail across ancient Greece\u2019s wine-dark sea after the Trojan War in Homer\u2019s epic, The <\/em>Odyssey. <\/em>Each day is lit by the dawn goddess Eos riding across the sky. But because English translations often adopted Roman gods, such as in Alexander Pope\u2019s 1726 version, I encounter Eos\u2019s counterpart Aurora: <\/p>\n\n But when, from dewy shade emerging bright, <\/em> The Greeks called the north wind Boreas, but it wasn\u2019t until the Renaissance that the Northern Lights\u2019 synonym was created by Galileo, who combined Aurora <\/em>with the Latinised Borealis. <\/em>But those are not its only names. In Old Norse mythology it\u2019s Bifrost, a bridge to the realm of gods where Odin, Thor and Loki reside. Translated by Rasmus B Anderson in 1901, Snorri Sturluson\u2019s medieval text The <\/em>Prose <\/em>Edda <\/em>reveals: <\/p>\n\n The gods made a bridge from earth to heaven, which is called Bifrost? You must have seen it. It may be that you call it the rainbow. It has three colors <\/em><\/p>\n\n And it\u2019s not only Nordic skies lit by mythical characters. In northern Scotland, the lights are called the Mirrie Dancers. In Scottish Gaelic they\u2019re Na Fir-Chlis, the \u2018nimble men\u2019, which is also the name of a 1909 poem by Donald Mackenzie. It incorporates folklore associated with the lights, in which a fairy ceilidh in the heavens turns into a conflict. I discover Mackenzie was born and buried in, of all places, Cromarty. And this fills me with hope that when I\u2019m there, I\u2019ll get to watch \u201cas merrily flit the Nimble Folk across the Northern Sky\u201d. <\/p>\n\n Caroline Burrows is a professional poet and writer based in Bristol who\u2019s been featured on BBC Radio 4. Follow her on social media: @VerseCycle<\/em><\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n\n Caroline Burrows on the verses that captured the sky-spectacle down the ages<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":41560,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ub_ctt_via":"","purple_page_number":"25","purple_custom_meta_purple_page_number":"25","purple_seq_number":"1","purple_custom_meta_purple_seq_number":"1","purple_source_article":"article_25-1.xml","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_article":"article_25-1.xml","purple_source_issue":"March-2023","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_issue":"March-2023","purple_external_id":"March-2023-25-1","purple_custom_meta_purple_external_id":"March-2023-25-1","purple_issue_code":"|0000086562||","purple_custom_meta_purple_issue_code":"|0000086562||","purple_android_product":"com.im.skyatnight.214","purple_custom_meta_purple_android_product":"com.im.skyatnight.214","purple_ios_product":"com.im.skyatnight.214","purple_custom_meta_purple_ios_product":"com.im.skyatnight.214","purple_web_product":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_web_product":"","purple_publication_id":"075fab74-0a21-4201-866a-899d6c41c40c","purple_migrated":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[14],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/02\/09816003-55b3-4969-a9da-ae7d3787e74e.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3","apple_news_title":""},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/02\/09816003-55b3-4969-a9da-ae7d3787e74e.jpg",1392,1006,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/02\/09816003-55b3-4969-a9da-ae7d3787e74e-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/02\/09816003-55b3-4969-a9da-ae7d3787e74e-300x217.jpg",300,217,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/02\/09816003-55b3-4969-a9da-ae7d3787e74e-768x555.jpg",768,555,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/02\/09816003-55b3-4969-a9da-ae7d3787e74e-1024x740.jpg",800,578,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/02\/09816003-55b3-4969-a9da-ae7d3787e74e.jpg",1392,1006,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/02\/09816003-55b3-4969-a9da-ae7d3787e74e.jpg",1392,1006,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Caroline Burrows on the verses that captured the sky-spectacle down the ages","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41562"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41562"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42272,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41562\/revisions\/42272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Or midnight\u2019s silent glowing northern lights unreachable. <\/em><\/p>\n\n
The ice-green light shall lie, <\/em>
Beyond the trees the Northern Lights <\/em>
Slant on the belts of sky. <\/em><\/p>\n\n
Aurora streaks the sky with orient light <\/em><\/p>\n\n
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