An evening with Edward Thomas

Went down to London yesterday for a day of culture – the Royal Academy in the morning, Poetry library in the afternoon and an evening with Edward Thomas.

The evening was not as the delightful Matthew Hollis pointed out at the start with the man himself but with his poems. After one of his previous sessions a couple staying in the same B&B were heard complaining at breakfast that they’d expected the first world war poet be there in person not just someone talking about him.



Actually with Thomas’ image projected on the screen at the front of the hall and with his wife Helen reading a couple of his poems (recordings obviously) I fancy that he was with us last night, listening possibly with some bemusement and not a little pride as a roll-call of poets read from his work and talked about how much it meant to them.


The poets were Michael Longley, Gillian Clarke and Andrew Motion together with Sarah Hall who was engagingly pleased to join the company of poets even though she write prose. But then so did Thomas and as well as poems she read from his war diaries. It was an evening full of riches. I took away from it one poignant moment when Thomas and Wilfred Owen are on the same railway platform. Owen has yet to be published and they don’t know each other so they don’t speak…

Writing away from Home

"There is no better air than here for work" John Maynard Keynes

I’ve managed to line myself up two writing courses for this autumn. Last weekend was the Tilton House retreat led by Vanessa Gebbie.

At the end of October I’m off to North Wales (again) for a whole week of writing with Cinnamon Press and Jan Fortune and Pete Marshall. I wrote so much in the spring during the last course and these were the poems that earned me a distinction from the OU.

The Tilton House retreat – former home of Maynard Keynes and Lydia Lopokova – was splendid.

http://www.tiltonhouse.co.uk/

It is a delightful house with lots of nooks and crannies, log fires and wholesome vegan cooking. It would have been possible just to spend the weekend reading and relaxing but I was there to work. The whole point of spending money on going away from home is for the space to think and write. I’d been looking at one of the 1941 convoys focussing in particular on the Sydney Star and her captain Thomas Sydney Horn, OBE. Being at Tilton gave him the chance to step out of the shadows to tell the story of what happened during Operation Substance – so by the end of the weekend I had a first draft of a long poem written.

A little Historical research

Malta Convoys 1940-43 by Richard Woodman has been my heavyweight summer reading. It is the definitive history of the ships that supplied Malta and I’ve come to regard it as a sort of bible when it comes to finding out all the details.

Unlike some of my other Malta reading it offers tantalising glimpses of Taid’s ship M.V. Ajax. She was involved in three of the convoys – Operation Halberd in September 1941, MW8A and Operation Vigorous in June 1942.

The Ajax ended up stuck on Malta for the autumn of 1941 as it was not safe for the merchant vessels to leave the island without a naval escort. She spent the three months dodging bombs with most of the crew sheltering in the caves, leaving one watch on board ship. On Christmas Eve she was hit by a bomb but the only casualties were chickens in a crate, being fattened up by the Chinese greasers for New year. The bomb left a hole in the side of the ship which was still there when she sailed.

She finally got away on Boxing Day 1941 (convoy ME8) in the company of City of Calcutta, Clan Ferguson and Sydney Star. They were of course attacked and the Ajax was saved by the seamanship of her captain, John Scott watching astern as the bomber lined up and swinging her on one side or the other by a hard-over helm order and stopping one engine. They were near-missed numerous times but made it to Alexandria on 29th December, before going on to Port Said.

“No rest for the wicked” – as Taid might have said because on 16th January 1942 the Ajax and Thermopylae were in a convoy MW8A heading from Alexandria back to Malta, followed by Clan Ferguson and City of Calcutta (MW8B). One of the escorting ships the destroyer Gurkha was torpedoed by U-boat U133 on 17th January. her crew were saved by the Dutch vessel, Isaac Sweers. On 18th January Thermopylae developed engine trouble and was re-routed back to Alexandria. Her slow speed made her an easy target for the Luftwaffe and she had to be abandoned and sunk. by 19th January the convoy was approaching Malta and Hurricanes from the island drove off the German aircraft enabling Ajax, Clan Ferguson and City of Calcutta to reach Grand Harbour with 30,000 tons of supplies.