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Peace Poetry Rsl Poets Mark the Centenary of Wilfred Owen’S Death Contents PEACE POETRY RSL poets mark the centenary of Wilfred Owen’s death CONTENTS Foreword Molly Rosenberg 2 The Swimmer Helen Mort 4 Futility Wilfred Owen 6 White Sheets Ian Duhig 7 On the Sambre Canal Gillian Clarke 9 The Spring Pascale Petit 10 Recruitment Blake Morrison 14 Poem / For Muammar al-Gaddafi Inua Ellams 15 An Unseen Carol Ann Duffy 16 The Send-Off Wilfred Owen 17 The Few Michael Symmons Roberts 18 Ors Michael Longley 23 Dulce et Decorum Est Wilfred Owen 24 First published in 2018 by Battle Grace Nichols 26 the Royal Society of Literature Naw dros heddwch / Nine for Peace Menna Elfyn 28 Come to the River Fiona Sampson 32 Each poem © its named author, 2018 Cover illustration © Anna Trench, 2018 Smile, Smile, Smile Wilfred Owen 34 Peace < Water Sabrina Mahfouz 36 The contributors have asserted their Wilfred Owen: November 4, 1918 Paul Muldoon 38 right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as The Next War Wilfred Owen 40 authors of this work. From My Diary, July 1914 Wilfred Owen 41 ISBN: 978-1-9165033-0-4 Wilfred Owen: A Biographical Note 43 Notes on Contributors 45 Acknowledgements 49 Royal Society of Literature celebrates. In this pamphlet, RSL poet Fellows have written new poems of peace, poems that FOREWORD remember the First World War and many wars since. In them, we find violence met with birdsong, the politics of power set against passion for a better world, Owen’s last mud-drenched weeks restored to the waters of his youth. Interspersed with our Fellows’ poems are Owen’s own, marking the ravages of war and entreating peace. While we In his poem ‘From My Diary, July 1914’, Wilfred Owen recalls a cannot measure the effect Owen’s words have had in the time before war, with century since his death, the poems here, in response to his work, his life and his subjects, mark further generations of Bees hope. Our poets strive to guide us to a better future, to return Shaking the heavy dews from bloom and frond. us from negotiations of violence and rage, as swimmers in “the Boys sparkling cold”, out beneath “the shimmering trees”. Bursting the surface of the ebony pond. Flashes Molly Rosenberg Of swimmers carving thro’ the sparkling cold. Director Fleshes Royal Society of Literature Gleaming with wetness to the morning gold. Owen’s watery idyll would conclude in November 1918 in quite a different body of water, when the poet died, one week before the Armistice, on the banks of the Oise-Sambre Canal, near Ors, northern France. He was 25 years old. Wilfred Owen is remembered now as one of the foremost of a generation of soldier-poets. He was one of millions who perished in the bloodied mud of France and Belgium, leaving in his verse words to honour the dead, and to urge political leaders to ensure that these losses, this suffering of war, were not repeated. In winter 2018, at the closing of commemorations of the First World War, it is this lasting power of poetry to bear witness to suffering and implore future peace that the 2 3 The Swimmer Helen Mort In his book ‘RisingTideFallingStar’, Philip Hoare describes and there is always Wilfred Owen’s lifelong love of swimming, particularly his a point to swim to connection to the waters near Torquay. His father, Tom Owen, beyond the gull’s view hoped Wilfred might have a life at sea and taught him to swim at the age of six. Swimming remained a source of comfort and beyond the depth inspiration throughout Wilfred’s life. that Keats saw too far into I am only a boy in the lone cove but my chest beyond Meadfoot is blanched driftwood carried like bark only a shape short body long fringe I know only one distance as rocks are fastidious shapes and as I swim the land is not a cup of war as the sea is a tidal shape a restless hand Dover Salisbury Plain long-opened to the afternoon all drowned there is nothing its scattered rain I am naked light as the quartz- under the sea white of breaking foam but me with my held breath I take wolf-steps down to the place counting to ten the water touches me a plane a bird casting its shadow overhead 4 5 Futility White Sheets Wilfred Owen Ian Duhig Move him into the sun – I am driving towards Ripon Gently its touch awoke him once, where Owen wrote ‘Futility’ At home, whispering of fields half-sown. another May a century ago Always it woke him, even in France, before his last tour to France. Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now My own road falls between The kind old sun will know. sheets of hawthorn blossom as if the snow drifted here Think how it wakes the seeds – from Wilfred Owen’s poem. Woke once the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides At Coxwold I stopped to see Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? in the Shandy Hall collection Was it for this the clay grew tall? its ‘Tristram Shandy’ edition – O what made fatuous sunbeams toil designed for soldiers’ pockets To break earth’s sleep at all? and thought about Uncle Toby, that warrior as gentle as Owen, the white page of Toby’s love and Owen’s unwritten poems, their shrouds of white paper blank as my mind as I drive, the worm in my brain a song for another soldier, for them all, 6 7 On the Sambre Canal Gillian Clarke ‘The Green Fields of France’: Here on the bridge, silence is the white stone . But the sorrow, the suffering, on his grave, when the something we call soul the glory, the shame, the killing had gone. The canal is a page of slow and dying was all done in vain, unscrolling waterlight, unwritten. for young Willie McBride His last night, writing home while his men slept, it all happened again, he dreamed a future beyond war and sorrow, and again, and again, before they crossed the water, before they wept and again, and again . crying their mothers’ name, before the crow had dipped its beak in blood, before the birds fed on beloved flesh. One week – one week before the Armistice, before his words sang to the weeping world, and still they speak. Unsilenced, poetry sings in the mind, his lines on water whispered by the wind. 8 9 The Spring Pascale Petit I went to the water barrel forests of headlines fed by our spring no one should read, and saw, on the black surface – I washed the print from my eyes. a wolf-cloud, a scythe moon, What could I do but cup plunged my hands in to scoop the water tenderly, slivers of my face let the syllables braided with spirit-of-mountain. speak, Then I heard a wild boar tell me how it circles the globe, cornered by hounds sees nation gouge at nation like river at rock. in the innocent wood, the primeval wood I’d like to say the radio went quiet, that the papers now tell leaf-stories where holm oaks of blackbirds’ quarrels with sparrows, tried to muffle the sound. that the pages rolled back into trees, * and the front page is bark. Then there was news, always * the same news – 10 11 I went to the water barrel I dived into the barrel fed by our spring and breathed through a straw and saw, on the black surface – while armies searched caves a hawk turn into a missile, where refugees cowered. the moon on fire. I prayed for oxygen. Fox-scream and hare-scream streamed from my mouth. From my mouth poured birdsong, I scooped slivers of my face leaf-light, braided with viper. a rain Then I heard children of musical notes, a hymn to peace. cornered by soldiers in the innocent wood, the primeval wood where burnt oaks tried to muffle the sound. 12 13 Recruitment Poem / For Muammar al-Gaddafi Blake Morrison #After Simon Armitage Inua Ellams It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg He thought he’d better join . He didn’t have to beg. And he took power in a bloodless coup ‘Disabled’, Wilfred Owen And brought his people democratic rule And championed free speech, building new schools You were down there straight from school, at sixteen. He hung a student who critiqued his views. A career, they called it, a chance to travel the world, And though his speeches were received lukewarm though what drew you was that photo on Facebook – And he kept promises he made to charm two soldiers riding quad bikes on a shingle beach. And gave free equipment to start up farms No one talked about war. One day there might be a tour He gunned down protestors marching unarmed. but you were used to scraps and this time you’d have body armour. And to each Libyan he pledged a home Man up, they said, that first morning in Helmand Province. And channelled a river through desert stone Man down, they shouted, when an IED took out your jeep. And fought imperialism from his bone A shame you couldn’t see the flag draped over your coffin. He found no peace until he died alone. A relief you’ll never know how little has changed – Here’s how we should rate him when we look back: suicide bombers, rogue militias, the Taliban reaping their poppies, Sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that.
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