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| To the War Poets, available now in paperback and hardback formats from Carcanet |
Since writing the verse letters that thread my collection (poems that came unwontedly, while showing students the battlefields), I have begun to wonder what it is that draws me to the First World War Poets. There are the obvious things. I ‘did’ them at school and have myself taught them. There is something immediately engrossing about the human stories, the ironies and juxtapositions: no one in class need ask what a poem is about, let alone whether it’s any good (‘above all I am not concerned with Poetry’). Like a film based on true events, literature by soldiers is automatically endowed with an authenticity. We are ‘getting crisis/First-hand’, as Heaney put it.
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| Clarence Melville Greening, John Greening's grandfather. |
For my generation, however, there are also the last few personal connections: my grandfather was at the Somme, though he never spoke of it, just sang the songs, used the slang, cracked the jokes. He named our garden shed The Better ‘ole, after Bruce Bairnsfather’s famous postcard. I inherited Grandpa’s collection of such cards and news clippings, one of which led to my poem about Robert Nichols (see illustration, right). My father worked in Whitehall and he had a particular reverence for the Cenotaph – something I allude to in ‘Home Office’. At school, I remember talking with friends about whether we were ever likely to be called up. The wars came, of course, but not the call. Instead, we were shipped to Germany on a school exchange, where I sat in on a lesson about Georg Heym’s 1911 poem ‘Der Krieg’ (the German equivalent of ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’). To the War Poets is dedicated to that Mainz exchange partner, a friend for over forty years, and the collection opens with my version of Heym’s extraordinarily prophetic poem.Had things been different, would I have gone enthusiastically, like 18-year-old Edmund Blunden, who cycled from Framfield to Chichester to enlist? It is possible. I enjoy (and have produced) Oh, What a Lovely War! as much as anyone else, but that doesn't prevent me from seeing how loyalty to a battalion might be deeply satisfying. These things can’t be reduced to ‘petty right or wrong’. I don’t think I would have gone into battle like a Julian Grenfell. But nor would I have been an Ivor Gurney, busy looking for the biscuit tin during bombardment.
Some of this may be behind my verse letters. But the Georgian aesthetic is part of the attraction too. These were poets with a highly developed sense of place, pastoral poets. The war they found themselves in just happened to be fought in generally rural locations. When Edward Thomas picked up that celebrated handful of earth for Eleanor Farjeon, it wasn't so much a patriotic gesture as a way of showing that this was for him ‘significant soil’. It is such incidents that made me wish I could meet or chat with these fellow practitioners. Since I could not send a Friend request on Facebook, I turned to pencil and paper (precious items in the trenches if you weren't an officer). Is this presumptuous? I hope not. Poets have always been in conversation with each other, very often across time. When Keith Douglas remarks ‘Rosenberg I only repeat what you were saying’ he acknowledges as much. I have no right to say any such thing as (unlike, say, Brian Turner or Kevin Powers). I am not a war poet. All a non-combatant can do today is watch.
John Greening appeared on last Friday's The Verb on BBC Radio 3, where he discussed To the War Poets and poetry of the First World War with presenter Ian McMillan. Listen to that again here.
John Greening appeared on last Friday's The Verb on BBC Radio 3, where he discussed To the War Poets and poetry of the First World War with presenter Ian McMillan. Listen to that again here.
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