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British Antarctic Survey’s Artist in Residence Melanie Challenger will be Mslexia’s official South Pole correspondent during her three-month stay in the southern hemisphere during the 2007-2008 International Polar Year. Living aboard the RRS James Clark and working alongside the region’s scientists, the Forward-nominated poet will be sending us regular updates on her adventures, observations and dalliances with penguins.

‘International Polar Year is so historically important – different countries, governments, and societies converging to deepen our understanding of the planet and its systems in order to project policies for a sustainable future,’ says Challenger. ‘To be standing amid this as a woman and as a poet in a world increasingly inhospitable to sublime thinking or abstract lyricism is profoundly exciting to me.’