Elizabeth Lewis Williams

I have recently submitted a creative-critical PhD (‘The Magnetic Observatory’: An exploration of scientific and poetic measure in Antarctic poetry) at the University of East Anglia. My research interests, critically and creatively, centre around representations of Antarctica, more particularly the ways in which our understanding of the continent is inflected by the practice of science, and how this is reflected in our use of language. In my creative practice, I have been exploring how archival documents and current scientific papers can be employed in poetry to address historical and contemporary issues; I am also interested in how the forms of the poems in the space of the page can encourage a consideration of communication across time as well as distance. I have recently completed a collection of poems entitled ‘Erebus’, which contain a number of linked sequences based on the life of Antarctic scientists around the time of the International Geophysical Year. The experience of imagining Antarctica is also an important part of the work, and gives rise to a poetic consideration of perception, communication and representation. My most recent collection, ‘The Iceberg Project’, explores the relevance of Antarctica and Antarctic science in the Anthropocene.