Melinda Mueller
Poet and author of What the Ice Gets: Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition 1914-1916.
EVENT: Mueller reads at Open Books (2414 N 45th St, 633-0811) on Thurs Nov 9 at 7:30 pm.

The story of the Shackleton expedition has been retold many times. Why retell it through poetry? "If I was going to have the kind of companionship a writer gets to have with a story, it was going to have to be written in poetry. Using poetry was a way to create a tone appropriate to the narrative and to each of the men's monologues, as well as imagine and then render the thoughts of these men. And this is an epic story, and humans have always told their epics as poetry. It seemed odd to me that this story hadn't been written as a poem."

Do you have a personal connection to the Shackleton story? "I knew the story early on and read about it in grade school, so I quickly adopted Shackleton as a childhood hero. I've come back to the story a number of times, giving me a chance to reinstate Shackleton and the rest of them as my adult heroes. I also heard another account of the story read around a campfire above the Arctic Circle. Hearing the story there gave me a new appreciation for the hard beauty of the place they were in. And finally, after I was diagnosed with cancer two years ago, it put my difficulties in perspective and gave me a model for coping."

What does the Shackleton story say to you about the human spirit? "What stands out for me most about the story is that the situation was hopeless--not just on occasion, but time and again. It was hopeless to think they could survive the crushing of the ship, and months living on ice floes. Sailing the James Caird 800 miles to South Georgia to get help was utterly, totally hopeless--it simply couldn't be done. And three ill-equipped men crossing South Georgia on foot was an impossible task. But they did all of it. They did it by doing whatever was in front of them at the moment, and then doing the next thing in front of them. They did it by helping each other--even though a number of them despised some of their shipmates. Their story is my 'Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes.'"