Sunday Poetry by Shane Rhodes
The Voyages of Martin Frobisher
Welcome back to Sunday Poetry, where only the most epic poetry can be found. This week, we're looking at ‘The Voyagers of Martin Frobisher’ from Dead White Men by Shane Rhodes. If you like what you see, don't refrain from signing up to receive the Sunday Poetry newsletter that includes exclusive poems and discounts in your inbox on any given Sunday.
1. [They] in search for a passage to Cathaia (1576)
We had bene vtterly lost
We thought these places might onely be called the Isie Seas
and we could not tell where we were
They shall get them into the latitude of _ and _
We sought to find the rich countrey of Cataya
these poore men of Bristow
where all the sands and clifts did so glister
faine to submit themselues to the mercy of the vnmerciful yce
yet we haue not found any
and therewith like to be brused in peeces and perish in the sea
We weyed ancker
They saw themselues certaine people of that countrey
We wrote our letters
Meta Incognita
We could perceiue
They found themselves without sight of Sunne
We sawe many monsterous fishes
They eat raw flesh and are of the colour of a ripe Oliue
and strange foules
They be more then by writing can be expressed
Into a ring we cast our selues vpon our knees
They haue not seene the thing whereof you aske them
and gaue God humble thanks
and by signes declared they wil stop their eares
We left toyes
and vnderstand you not
belles
They will teach vs the names
kniues
of each thing
pictures of men
in their language and women
They beleeve we can make them liue
We all beleeued
or die at our pleasure
yet by no meines
They worship the deuill
can we apprehend and they made signes vnto vs
any of them
that they had seene gold
2. [He]: upon the death of Kalicho (1577)
I was summoned
quenching the fire
before imminent
inflammation
death.
gaping
When he was among us
the body neglected
everyoneʼs judgment
dissected
was deceived.
putredinem
There was
two ribs broken
you might sayulcer of the lung
‘Anglophobia’
Anglium diceres metum which he had
dropsy
when he first arrived.
bloodletting
When he came back to himself
standing on the shore from the deep
he sang clearly
and summoned up
his last words
in our language
the foolish, too uncivilized man ‘God be with you.’
Kalicho
He died.
Calichough
Quite enough!Callicho
I was bitterly
Calichoe
grieved
Calichoughe
for our most gracious
Cally Chough
Queen
Callichoghow heCollichang
slipped through
Calibanher
this Inuit man
fingers.Kalisuuq
3. [Drawing them out]: Frobisher’s Captives
[Fight between Frobisher and Eskimos
watercolor (?) in Baffinland
(capture scene)
last seen
Munich in 1776
Metropolitan Museum of Art
(HB 24 415)
Kalicho
full-length in oils
with bow and arrows and paddle
Drawing in native dress
sealskin jacket with hood and tail
carried aboard the 1577 voyage
now in Zurich Zentralbibliothek 1964standing to front and looking to rightFull-length in oils
Fig. 8a.
Three busts [Full-length
kayak and ship in background
Rijksuniversiteit te Gent]
with names inscribed:
‘Arnaq and Nutaaq’(78 E 54; ff.410v.-410v.)location now unknown
Portrait
last seen in 1688
in the British Museum (1989)
with bows and arrows
1577 Captivescaption: ‘To send overseas
captured in oil
and English dressfor the Queen’
In looking at the dead white men that litter Canada’s landscape, you can’t avoid Martin Frobisher. He sailed three times to Baffin Island. The first, in 1576, searching for the Northwest Passage to China (and during which 5 of his men were taken captive by the Inuit). In 1577, he sailed with even more men and collected 200 tonnes of Black Ore, “which was esteemed to be very ritch and full of gowld.” While searching for the lost seamen from the previous voyage, they fought local Inuit and kidnapped three: a man they called Calichoughe, a woman called Egnock, and her child, Nutioc. On their return to England, the captives were painted, drawn, examined and written about in publications all over Europe. All three died within a few months.
“The Voyages of Martin Frobisher” is built, in part, upon George Best’s 1584 work on Frobisher’s three voyages, contemporary descriptions of drawings made of the Inuit captives (many are still housed in European museums), and a collection of the many different spellings of Kalisuuq (both the name and character of Shakespeare’s “Caliban” may be based on Kalisuuq). I've also repurposed Edward Dodding’s 1577 autopsy report which details the sickness and death of Kalisuuq. Although the report could easily be seen as a quaint scientific document from its time, I think it important to remember that it is rooted in the death and desecration of a real Inuit man; I hope the poem brings some semblance of respect back to his death.
Dead White Men (2017)Juxtaposing the seemingly benign names of Europeans that permeate our geographies with the details of their so-called discoveries and conquests, Dead White Men turns ideas of exploration, discovery, finding and keeping back upon themselves. Engaging with exploration and scientific texts from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries – texts wrapped up in the history and ongoing present of colonization – this collection builds a fascinating poetry of memory out of histories that are largely forgotten.
