Student wins big with Franz Josef poem

Don Scott

Inspiration: Washington College graduate Emma Sovich collected a $87,961 cheque for her poem, Franz Josef.

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A trip to Franz Josef glacier on the West Coast has won an American university student a rich undergraduate literary prize.

Washington College graduate Emma Sovich collected a $US67,000 ($NZ87,961) cheque for her poem, Franz Josef.

Her work won the university's Sophie Kerr literary prize, the Washington Post reported.

"I tried to capture not so much exactly what I did but how it felt to be there,'' Sovich said of her glacier poem.

Her portfolio included writing for a blog on her work in an old-style printer's workshop, where she sorts lead type and prints her poems on an old platen press.

The prize was named for an early 20th-century journalist who left the bulk of her estate to the college.

Sovich also won a photo contest with a haunting image of a crevasse on the glacier.

The poem, published in the Washington College Review, read:   RANZ JOSEF
  

   Between the rain enveloping us
   and the clouds weighing down
   upon the rocky shoulders of the valley,
   Franz Josef loomed, a deceptive sprawl
   of dirt-streaked ice. We swam
   in our layers of clothing, sloshing
   through stone and stream to attain
   its ponderous foot. Our guide
   ascended a stairway between its toes,
   and we clambered behind, encumbered
   by inexperience. The valley's detritus,
   earthy toe-lint, granted us easier passage;
   later, each step was slick with freeze.
   Climbing was dependent upon weight,
   a whole body thrown into the iron talons
   of a boot. Our path wound with the wrinkles.
   We gazed up past chiseled seracs
   arrowhead sharp, to the marbled clouds
   licking the silhouetted ridges of the alps.
   Higher, finger bridges stretched
   across crevasses as deep as thought;
   few looked down until safe on the edge.
   The stairs melted into raw glacier
   and we thumped along crevasse
   bottoms created by tumbled
   snow men heads. We breathed blue,
   atmospheric azure that exhaled
   from the dense walls, carved
   undulations formed of melt-waters.
   The rain faded, and gradually
   the sun pierced veins in the grey sky,
   and the valley below swelled with light,
   light that slipped along our footsteps,
   pooling into the glacial heart; we swam
   from compact cobalt into gelid gold. 

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JE Stewart   #2   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

It is great to see that our New Zealand Terrain has inspired such a wonderful work of poetry.

RM Sovich   #1   05:26 pm Jan 28 2009

Emma, loved her trip to New Zealand. It clearly had a profound effect on here life and art. Thank you, New Zealand, for the hospitality and warmth you showed her on her trip there.

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