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

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CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3 INTRODUCTION 4 SCOPE 5 BACKGROUND The Difficulties in Defining Poetry and War 6 The Evolution of War Poetry 7 CONTEMPORARY WAR POETRY Page Protest Poetry 9 Finding a Credible Voice 11 Today’s Soldier-Poets and their Families 14 The War Zone Civilians 17 THE ROLES OF CONTEMPORARY WAR POETRY The Human Condition 18 Poetry as a Force for Change 19 Poetry as Therapy 20 Securing the National Record 21 THE RELEVANCE OF POETRY TODAY 21 PROPOSITIONS The Deployed War Poet 24 A British Operation HOMECOMING 26 Collating the Present to Secure the Future 28 IN CONCLUSION 29 BIBLIOGRAPHY 31 ANNEX A – SELECTED POEMS 36 3
WHERE ARE THE WAR POETS: THE ROLE AND PLACE OF CONTEMPORARY BRITISH WAR POETRY INTRODUCTION In 2014 the United Kingdom will mark the centenary of the outbreak of the 1914 -18 Great War. We can expect carefully planned schedules of films, documentaries, museum exhibitions and print, examining every angle of this war – the participants, the politics, the pity and the pathos of trench warfare, and the reaction, resilience and courage of men and women in the face of such horrors. All the standard media forms will feature – television, film, radio, art galleries, and theatre – but, at some point, attention will inexorably shift to the poetry of the Great War and the names of the Great War poets immortalised on a modest plaque at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. 1 Their poetry has become part of the national psyche. It continues to be taught and studied as part of the current English GCSE curricula, albeit with varying standards of success; there are Great War poetry appreciation societies, web sites and volumes of critical analysis; even the current Prime Minister cites Wilfred Owen 2 as his favourite poet. Such is this legacy that one might be forgiven for thinking that war poetry started and ended with the Great War. 3 This would be a false presumption however. Today our world remains profoundly a place of conflict. While the scale of these wars can not match those of the last century, they are no less bloody, terrifying or shocking for the participants than their predecessors. And in our digitised and connected world, these strange, hybrid wars, in their turn, clamour for our attention. Since 2001, Iraq and Afghanistan have produced volumes of printed journalism, analysis and commentary, as well as an explosion of British autobiographical accounts about fighting in the dirt and dust of Basra, Maysan and Helmand provinces. Films, documentaries, televised journalism, and even theatre, 4 have offered insights and drama. Visual art also adds to this rich mosaic. 5 Even rock music is muscling in. Following the release of her most recent album, ‘Let England Shake’, with song lyrics that refer to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been speculation that singer-songwriter, PJ Harvey, may yet be commissioned by the Imperial War Museum as an official ‘war singer’! 6 But, there seems to be an absence of war poetry. One has to hunt to find reference to the ongoing conflicts, that are shaping the early twenty-first century, in today’s British poetry scene, leaving us with a sense that war poetry is moribund and irrelevant, and worse, that this form of discourse has had its day in the hi-tec twenty-first century. Yet poetry is being written today that is informed either directly or indirectly 1 Richard Aldington (1892-1962), Laurence Binyon (1869-1945), Edmund Blunden (1896-1974), Rupert Brooke (1887- 1915), Wilfred Gibson (1878-1962), Robert Graves (1895-1985), Julian Grenfell (1888-1915), Ivor Gurney (1890- 1937), David Jones (1895-1974), Robert Nichols (1893-1944), Wilfred Own (1893-1918), Sir Herbert Read (1893- 1968), Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), Charles Sorley (1895-1915) and Edward Thomas (1878-1917). The plaque was unveiled by the then Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, on 11 th November 1985. 2 Andrew Motion, ‘Strange Meetings: The Poets of the Great War – Review’, The Guardian, 13 November 2010. 3 ‘and that all war poetry ought to look like the verse of Owen et al – the stalemate of the trenches, slaughter on an industrial scale, ‘lions led by donkeys and so on’, Andrew Motion, in conversation with the author, 10 th January 2011. 4 For example: ‘Black Watch’. Written by Gregory Burke for the National Theatre of Scotland and first staged on 1 st August 2006; it has won a number of awards and is still being toured. And in response to the play ‘The Great Game’ – The Times had this to say - ‘It shows that art can still tell truths that newsreels alone cannot; that the theatre of war need not always be played out on a battlefield’, Leading Article, ‘Theatrical Troops’, The Times, 11 th January 2011, page 2. 5 The MOD continues to work closely with the Imperial War Museum’s (IWM) War Artist programme to sponsor and deploy artists to operational theatres who look, listen and translate their experiences into work for the public record. See for example the recent works by returning British Artists, Arabella Dorman and Matthew Cook. In 2009, the former was quoted as saying that her role was to ‘draw the public’s gaze back from the big frontages of the newspapers and the main stories to the reality behind war and behind the frontline.’ 6 "We are certainly interested in working with PJ Harvey," Roger Tolson, the head of collections at the Imperial War Museum told Guardian.co.uk. ‘It is something we can take forward as we have never commissioned anybody in that capacity […] We have never sent a musician out to a conflict zone”, Vanessa Thorpe, ‘PJ Harvey to be offered chance to become ‘official war song correspondent’, The Guardian, 13 th February 2011. 4
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Page 5: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Today’s wars in
Page 9 and 10: definition from Clausewitz. His uni
Page 11 and 12: feelings’ - one person, the poet,
Page 13 and 14: or those that fight in them (‘pro
Page 15 and 16: ‘Can I Get A Witness’ 54 : Toda
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Page 19 and 20: defined as ‘the writing and readi
Page 21 and 22: But Does Anybody Still Read Poetry
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Page 25 and 26: Hugh Haughton sets out the argument
Page 27 and 28: BIBLIOGRAPHY Books Armitage, Simon,
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Page 31 and 32: When the dust of peace has settled
Page 33 and 34: lackthorns of your hair. All my wor
Page 35 and 36: and made the face you see today an
Page 37 and 38: the bodies of the enemy; they were
Page 39 and 40: and see what is there of knives and
Page 41 and 42: Before we gave them rations to take
Page 43 and 44: You’ll never see them again as fl
Page 45: 24. More Light, More Light (Anthony

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

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