A Poetry Of Place: The Village of Wainwright / Part 1

The photo is of the coastline and beach in the Village of Wainwright, Alaska. I took this photo in the late Spring of 2017. 

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Yesterday, I was flying from San Jose, California back to Fairbanks, Alaska, my current residence, when I settled on the idea of posting the poems I have written about the many places I have lived over the last decade. They draw a literary and autobiographical map of my experiences: what I viewed all around me, participated in, my friends and the words that expressed it all. Yet, as soon as I wrote those last three words of the last sentence, I knew I have so much more to write. 

My great-great grandfather, Joshua Slocum, wrote of his solo-travels around the world. Years ago, I found a copy of his book at a used bookstore in Upstate New York that was signed by my mother, Carol. Above her signature she wrote, “He had his ideas and his words, was he truly alone?” 

Poetry and painting (as well as sewing) have been my great companions as I trekked across the tundra of the Coastal Arctic regions of Alaska, through the wet bog of Dillingham’s beaches, the frozen waves of the Bering Sea, the sub-Arctic taiga of the interior and more. Some places I have yet to write about, such as Metlakatla. I will. Other places, like Juneau, find their way into poems via a single line or two.

In January of 2017, I moved to the Coastal Arctic Alaska village of Wainwright. When I arrived at Alak School, where I was contracted to teach first grade, I was told by a seasoned staff member, “You are not in the third world. You are now in the fourth world. This village is outside your life experiences. What you experience here will change you.” They were right. 

I lived and taught in Wainwright from January 2017 till June 2018. It was incredibly cold. I spent holidays in silence as I was a single teacher unlike most others who arrived with a teacher spouse. I made friendships with a small group of locals and passing-through educators. 

There was very limited food available at the local market. A photo of the store, which is named the Wainwright Cooperative, is below. The frozen sea is just in front of it. I heard it called, “The polar bear highway.”

I ate small bits of seal jerky, walrus meat and whale as the salmon I easily found in Southeast Alaska doesn’t populate Arctic waters. There was no chicken or other meat unless it arrived on a barge that had been at sea for several months. Vegetables were even more rare. I mostly ate frozen pizza and what my father and Kate sent me in care packages from their New Jersey home. Those were stuffed with avocados, pistachios, clementines, chocolate and more. 

Yet, it was also stunningly beautiful in Wainwright. In the late Spring and Summer (I lived there year round), I spent hours walking the often vacant beach. Boats and four wheelers whizzed by. I gathered seal and walrus teeth as others collect shells and beach glass. The photo below is of me carrying back to my housing beached whale baleen. A passing child in my classroom took the photo for me.

I learned the names of birds and flowers new to me. I watched children, many my students, race the wave. 

The friends I made looked out for me when I was alone on the beach. Now and again, they offered a hot mug of coffee on my return. The details of these days fell into my coat pockets. In the evening, I emptied my pockets onto the page.

In the back room of my teacher housing, I spent hours when the day was dark as night painting and writing. One of the poems I wrote is titled after the name of this far North place. It is below:

Wainwright 

Black hooves kick out from under sand dunes.

Stiff fur flattens, then rises beneath the morning moon.

A herd of caribou lies under this Arctic beach

brought here by local Inupiaq hunters’ hands and feet. 

Everywhere, storms of mosquitoes draw near.

Burnt wood speaks of a recent bonfire down here.

Hands wave, sand sprays and gulls squeal.

A quad whizzes by, one at the back and the wheel.

I spy something in the waves and reach.

Seal jaw holding onto four teeth.

There’s a tundra sled made of this bone

behind glass in the village I used to call home.

Bloated walrus pup in a bed of seaweed.

Fur glazed red, it’s eyes open wide ready to feed.

Hungry myself, I turn to head back.

Found baleen and jawbone clenched in a sack.

Here again at dawn as I am each day

to the coo of the bunting and foam of the wave.

Beluga sighted, boats race as others ready their pot.

I walk and gather till someone calls, “The coffee’s hot.”

Susan Slocum Dyer / © SSD

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