The Waking Glacier: A High Arctic Lyric

By Dianne Chisholm

The Waking Glacier is a compelling, if unsettling, work of literary travel that embarks on an Arctic sea voyage as a dawning, existential immersion in the larger-than-human world. Mixing poetic reflection, ecological inquiry, and episodic memory, Dianne Chisholm documents her queer obsession with the ice. This is not a chronicle of heroic adventuring, but a serial passage of haunting attunement. Glaciers are rendered animate, volatile beings--their sublime spectacle inseparable from the melancholic soundscape of their groans, wails, and wakes of collapse under forces of planetary warming. The text itself is a crystallizing sensorium, seamlessly synthesizing expedition journal, polar exploration, revisionary history, and innovative prose poetry. With lyrical acuity and philosophical depth, Chisholm's work serves as a powerful meditation on perception, loss, and the role of art in witnessing climate change. The Waking Glacier will resonate with readers of Juliana Spahr, Rebecca Solnit, Robert Macfarlane and Ellen Meloy, as well as scholars in environmental humanities and decolonial studies.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1772128759
• ISBN13: 9781772128758
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: University of Alberta Press
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"