Friday Poetry and Happy Weekend - Ritsos, Gebbie, Jenkins and Kinsella

I've been reading novels recently and it has been a while since I wrote about poetry reads so I'm glad to get back to it.

I have three poetry books on the go at present; Diaries of Exile by Yannis Ritsos, Memorandum poems for the fallen by Vanessa Gebbie and Marine by Alan Jenkins and John Kinsella.

It's thanks to the work of translators Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley that I've discovered the work of Yannis Ritsos. He wrote the poems in Diaries of Exile between 1948 and 1950 which he was a political prisoner. They illuminate the life around in the prison camp and the hopes and fears of the prisoners. The poems become shorter and shorter as his exile continues. I wonder if he was running out of energy, or perhaps there was less paper or conditions had become harsher or all of these things. I admire anyone for writing under these conditions.

During May I've been re-reading Memorandum, by my friend and fellow poet, Vanessa. As has been told before we wrote poems inspired by the Frist World War alongside each other but though the poems in the book are familiar I find like all the finest work you gain a new perspective by going back and re-reading them. Vanessa's book is one of the choices for May's War and Literature Readalong.

My other book is Marine, published by Enitharmon Press in 2015. It resulted from an unplanned collaboration between Alan Jenkins and John Kinsella who discovered they were both writing poems inspired by the sea. My favourite poem so far after a rapid first read is Albatross (after Baudelaire)

Commemorating the Battle of the Somme on a local scale

On the evening of first July my fellow poet, Neil Beardmore and I held a poetry reading at All Saint’s Church in Wing to remember the men killed on the first day of the battle of the Somme. In choosing which poems to include we went back to the words of the men who fought  from the well-known Siegfried Sassoon and Ivor Gurney to  the less familiar David Jones and Noel Hodgson and included in  the programme are the voices of women who did not have to go over the top and had the task of coping with the consequences of the war.  We also included response poems written by Neil, myself and Vanessa Gebbie. This was a small scale local event and not a grand affair like some of the other commemorations which took place across the UK and France but I wanted to do something quietly and by means of poetry to mark the day and to share it with other people. 

The poems were as follows

Before Action by William Noel Hodgson, MC – read by Caroline

Base Details by Siegfried Sassoon – read by Neil

The Dug-out by Siegfried Sassoon – read by Caroline

Does it Matter by Siegfried Sassoon – read by Neil

Sassoon talks to Hardy – written and read by Neil

Extract from In Parenthesis by David Jones – read by Neil

From Whitsbury Copse to Mametz Wood – written and read by Caroline

In Hospital by Edith Nesbit  – read by Caroline

To His love by Ivor Gurney read by Neil

First Time In by Ivor Gurney -  read by Caroline

Ivor – written and read by Neil

The Medal and The King’s Shilling (for my father’s father) – written and read by Neil

Adlestrop by Edward Thomas – read by Neil

Edward Thomas at Gidea Park – written and read by Caroline

Playing Trains – written by Vanessa Gebbie and read by Caroline

Extract from Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth – read by Caroline

The Litany – written and read by Caroline

Lights Out by Edward Thomas – read by Neil

I am most grateful to Vanessa for allowing us to include Playing Trains about two brothers from Adlestrop. As I explained to the audience before reading, I find it difficult to read dry-eyed at any time and especially when reading it aloud to other people. It did seem, however, entirely appropriate to shed a few tears on the evening of the day we were remembering more than nineteen thousand men  who were killed on the opening day of the battle. We ended the reading with two minutes of silence.

Photograph of Caroline by Karen Littleton

Voices from Stone and Bronze

I’m launching my second poetry collection, Voices from Stone and Bronze today, and I will be  reading in Milton Keynes, London and North Wales.  You can order your copy from Cinnamon Press.

 

With thanks to Jan Fortune, Vanessa Gebbie, and Jeremy Banning and also all the members of the Thursday advanced poetry group who read and commented on the poems as they were being written. 

Caroline Davies is writing poetry like no one else’s, embedded in shared, lived history. Her poems are quiet, direct, understated –and full of restrained power and emotional depth. Very moving, beautifully written, and unique in contemporary British poetry, this sequence deserves attention.

                                                Katy Evans-Bush

 

Our sons as well at New Venture Theatre Brighton

“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives. You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears.Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well”. Kemal Atatürk 1934

These words of Atatürk provided the foundation of an evening of poetry and prose from the Great War at the New Venture theatre in Brighton earlier in March. Impresario Tamsin Mastoris put together a stunning programme mixing the familiar, Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth and Strange Meeting with the less well known including women’s voices, from millworker Kitty Eckersley to diary extracts from German artist Käthe Kollwitz. It had the audience gripped as we were taken from the outbreak of war when women and men were caught up in the urge to play their part, through the impact of the war on families to the aftermath of the war in which so much had changed. It was a full programme and an intense evening. The enthusiasm of everyone associated with the production came through in the way they performed all of the forty six pieces. My personal highlights were hearing about second Lieut Herbert Percy Webb, R.F.A from Debz Sebborn, Siegfried Sassoon’s Statement of Military Defiance read by Colin Elmer and Eleanor Gamper reading Conscientious Objector by Edna St. Vincent Millay 

I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me 

Shall you be overcome.

The theatre is a Victorian building and has a well loved feel. I am a fan of studio spaces where you are close enough to the actors to feel fully involved. The final act began with a taster of the forthcoming production ‘How many miles to Babylon’.  I particularly enjoyed hearing poems from Vanessa Gebbie’s Memorandum especially the concluding performance of the evening which was David Bury – poem for seven voices – performed by the men of the cast. Thanks to a suggestion from Vanessa suggesting one of my poems ‘In the Royal Pavilion Hospital in September 1915’ was included. It was fascinating to hear my work read by someone else, actor Edward Cave. I liked the way he tackled the opening line with an emphasis on the first phrase ‘Here I am’ making it a declaration. When I read it myself I tend to stress the ‘being cared for’ but I liked his approach. It was good to hear it in a man’s voice.  

Edward Cave is one of the actors in the forthcoming ‘How Many Miles to Babylon’ based on Jennifer Johnston’s novel. This most topical play set in France and Ireland would be well worth catching if you are in Brighton from 8^th – 16^th April.

The Thiepval Memorial and Paul Emmanuel’s ‘Lost Men’

On the walls of the First World War Memorial on Thiepval ridge are the names of 72,194 men, most of whom were killed during the Battle of the Somme (1^st July -18^th November 1916).  They have no known grave, either because their remains were never found (they were obliterated by shell-fire) or because by the time what was left of them was recovered it was no longer possible to identify the man. The Thiepval Memorial is a gigantic red brick structure, designed by Lutyens and unveiled by the Prince of Wales on 1^st August 1932.

Photograph Jeremy Banning

As first time visitor to the Somme Battlefields you leave the visitor centre and walk towards the memorial along a wide grass avenue, the width of a couple of football pitches with trees on either side.  As you approach the memorial you feel smaller and smaller and more insignificant as it dominates the landscape.  

I first visited in 2012 and have returned to the Somme on a yearly basis since. I have always felt ambivalent about this memorial. There are others with similarly lengthy lists of names of the missing like the Menin Gate in Ypres/Ieper. Somehow that memorial with the daily sounding of the last post seems to provide a pause and a chance to remember the missing men as human beings. To me the Thiepval Memorial always seemed to be about Empire and grandeur. Perhaps you are meant to be impressed by its size and scale? It makes me feel uneasy. Is this how they would want to be remembered, by this monolithic structure with its vast arches?  

Perhaps it was never intended to offer consolation about the lost men. There is an online article by Prof Mark Connelly of the University of Kent about The loneliness ofThiepval.

Photograph from http://www.the-lost-men.net/

While visiting the memorial in the autumn of 2014 with fellow writer Vanessa Gebbie we discovered Paul Emmanuel’s counter memorial ‘The Lost Men, France’. By October there was very little left of his banners which had been hung earlier in the year within view of the memorial but set apart from it in the fields. Like the men who were killed during the battle and whose remains have become part of the land, the silk from the banners had been ripped and dispersed by the wind and rain. There was a damp drizzle on the afternoon we visited and it felt poignant and appropriate to find what were in effect pieces of skin scattered on the ploughed ground.

It felt grateful to the artist as it seemed to me as if his work came far closer to expressing what I feel when I go to the Somme, about the fragility of the men who were killed. Later in 2014 Paul Emmanuel returned to the Somme to gather up the remnants of the artwork. 

Photograph from http://www.the-lost-men.net/