Guest Poem by Paula Sankelo

Paula Sankelo (MA, MSc, Mtech) is a Finnish citizen living in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. An environmental researcher by profession, she currently works as a freelance writer and book review editor, and as a receptionist in Svalbard Museum. Her first poetry collection in Finnish, Katoava jää (Warelia Publishing), was awarded the Helsingin Sanomat prize for the best Finnish literary debut in 2024. More of her English poems are published in PolarLit: The Svalbard Literary Journal, Shearsman and The High Window. This poem is from Acumen 111.

We Learned That Everything Drifts
Green and Purple in the Barents Sea

almost everything: R/V Lance was
grounded deep on an unlucky reef

we heard Mayday and drove to assistance
sleepless the entire sunlit night.

Humming a shanty we wrote for the rescue
– our captain forbade us to sing it, of course –

we tugged with the strength of a thousand horses
till the hawser split in the blink of an eye

everyone failed to see it happen.
I had just spotted the school of orca:

they knew the strain and the splendid break
they felt it with all of their skin.

Title is quoted from Finnish poet Tua Forsström, with her permission, translated from the Swedish by Paula Sankelo