On “Sol Varp Sunnan”

I was originally shown this poem by the poet Rowan Evans on a course with the Poetry School. Our task was to bring it to life in new ways and with new perspectives. I looked at all the versions I could find and was surprised so many of them had personified the sun and the moon as male. So I made the sun, moon, and stars female or of unspecified gender, and chose a gardener to exist amongst them as an earthly counterbalance to their celestial indecisiveness. And secretly, that gardener was really my own father who had recently passed away.