Where are the war poets? - Defence Academy of the United Kingdom

desert, rhymes would manifest in my head, I would write them down, construct them into poems
and somehow felt better for getting it off my chest’. 58 Whilst it is a gross over-generalisation, even
a cursory scan reveals that the poems of today’s soldier-poets address the same familiar themes as
their twentieth century forebears – fear, loss, grief, loneliness, anger, isolation and comradeship.
Another veteran worth noting is John Jeffcock, a retired Coldstream Guards officer with operational
experience in the First Gulf War, Northern Ireland and Bosnia. Although he had written poems
before joining the Army, following his retirement from the services, he refined his skills through an
academic course and published his first collection in November 2009. 59
The internet can offer many variations on a theme for likeminded cyber communities and clearly
war poetry is catered for, but are there any formal or indeed informal organisations that exist to
support and encourage today’s solider-poets After five years in Helmand, there is no evidence of
an informal British in-house poetry or arts society in Lashkar Ghar (or in the UK) that attempt to
corral talent in the same way that, for example, Oasis did in the Western Desert during the Second
World War. 60 In contrast, Brian Turner (one of at least four members of his platoon in Iraq that
wrote poetry - although he only learnt this after his operational deployment) described a unique
weekly event in one of the US patrol bases in Iraq – an open microphone poetry session - an event
more understandable, perhaps, in the context of the US rap/hip-hop tradition where blacks and
whites take pride in their ability to produce their ‘flow’. 61
The families of British service personnel, whose lives have been changed forever, have also turned
to poetry to voice their feelings. Priscilla Dicketts is the mother of Corporal Oliver Dicketts, one of
the fourteen personnel killed during the notorious NIMROD XV230 crash at Kandahar,
Afghanistan in 2006. In response to her own loss, and encouraged by the letters of support that she
received from many others, she has collated poems, prose and free verse from the bereaved and
from those still serving. She published a modest anthology at her own expense in December 2010
with all subsequent proceeds going to the charity ‘Talking2Minds’. 62 Following an initial print run
of five hundred copies, she is planning a second edition to be published this year. This project did
not have the MOD’s support behind it however – rather the MOD sought to exercise a degree of
editorial control, and in a laughably ironic manner, wished to confirm that the draft did not contain
anything that might be judged ‘offensive’. 63
‘Didja Get Any Onya’ 64 : The War Zone Civilians
On 8 th August 2009, The Times responded to Duffy’s call to her fellow poets to bear witness to Iraq
and Afghanistan with an article by Erica Wagner in which she rightly reminded us that there are
58 For more on Alex Cockerill and his fellow soldier poets, see www.warpoetry.co.uk/Afghanistan_War_Poetry.html
59 John Jeffcock, The Book of War, (Kassala Publishing, 2009)
60 ‘[The Oasis was established in] Cairo, 1942 by a group of junior soldiers, the most senior a Corporal…The archive
grew to over 17000 poems and is now held in the Imperial War Museum’, Major Bruce Pennell RLC, ‘Where are the
war poets’, (British Army Review, Spring 2005, number 136). ‘The North African campaign generated an astonishing
poetic harvest, though it was not until Victor Selwyn’s retrospective ‘Return to Oasis: War Poems and Recollections
from the Middle East’ (1980) that the scale of literary invention in this particular theatre of war could be fully
documented.’, Hugh Haughton, ‘Anthologizing War’, The Oxford Handbook of British & Irish War Poetry, ed Tim
Kendall (Oxford University Press, 2009), page 433.
61 Brian Turner, in conversation with the author, 24 th January 2011.
62 Priscilla Dicketts (ed), ‘Dark Clouds and Silver Lining:A Collection of Writings by Serving British Servicemen and
Servicewomen, their Families and Friends’, (PSF Publications, 2010). None of the work in the collection has been
attributed to individuals – anonymity was an incentive for contributors. General Sir Rob Fry is quoted as saying ‘this
book is about the wars we fight now, but there is more to it than that. It taps into an unbroken tradition which perhaps
started with Fluellen at Agincourt, proceeded through Rifleman Harris in the Peninsular, and reached probably its finest
form with Owen, Rosenberg and the others in the First World War […] it is both of its time and timeless […] and is a
worthy custodian of everything it represents’. www.priscilladicketts.co.uk/
63 Priscilla Dicketts, in conversation with the author, 2 nd February 2011.
64 Frank Zappa, ‘Didja Get Any Onya’, ‘Weasels Ripped My Flesh’, (Zappa Records, 1970).
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