ANZAC Day and Poetry
Yesterday was ANZAC Day and I posted on the — apparent — dearth of NZ novels that addressed the ANZAC heritage in terms of either WW1 or WW2.
The case is not the same for poetry, however. A few years ago I featured a blog series on war poetry and quite a few of those poems commemorate the ANZAC experience, from a number of different perspectives. Here are the links to those poems now, as part of my own ANZAC commemoration.
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Ellen’s Vigil by Lorna Staveley Anker
A copy of this poem lies in the tomb of the Unknown Warrior in front of the National War Memorial in Wellington. It commemorates the loss of three of the poet’s uncles in WW1 and the effect of that loss on their mother, in particular.
Benjamin……..Isaac…….Tom
Passchendaele…..Ypres…and Somme
…………….three ovals float
…………….on the cold wall
plastered whiter
………………………………..than their bones
…
To read the poem in full, click on:
Ellen’s Vigil
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Lissjenthoek – A haibun, by Joanna Preston
Joanna’s poem commemorates is another account of the effects of war and loss within families, but the generational gap is wider, “stained and smudged” diaries the most direct connection — beyond bloodline and family heritage — to a lost great-uncle, “Row 21D. 4564 Corporal Stanley Coombes, 45th Battalion Australian Infantry, died 12th October 1917.”
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There. Red brick and white stone; an archway anything but triumphal. We wheeled our hired bicycles through the gate-building, blinking at the transition from light to shadow to light again as we stepped out into the garden. And garden it was. Rows of lilies, ranged in front of the crosses that marked the Canadian graves. The New Zealand graves. The South African graves …”
To read the full haibun, click on:
Lijssenthoek
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NZEF Trooper 203453 by Leigh Vickridge
Another intergenerational poem, Leigh Vickridge’s NZEF Trooper 203453, first featured here for ANZAC Day in 2011, records his father’s story:
“He was born at Longton Avenue
in London
not far from Crystal Palace
High tea on Sunday evenings
with the mater and the pater
then minor public school
Gallipoli washed away all that –
carnage at Chunuk Bair
flyblown corpses in the sun…”
NZEF Trooper 203453
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For A Song by Barbara Strang
“For A Song” is one of a sequence of poems Barbara wrote for and about her father and specifically addresses both aspects of his WW2 experience and also the aftermath of war, as seen through Barbara’s eyes, as one of his children.
“After it ended
the war was still on
around our house
in the thin-lipped silences
and grown-ups dressed in uniform colours,
navy, khaki, brown.
My father had been there,
didn’t talk about it
…”
To read the full poem, click on:
For a Song
Two aspects of these poems particularly interest me. The first is that although all are by poets who reside in New Zealand, our country’s history of inward migration is reflected in the fact that one poem commemorates a father born in England, although serving as a New Zealand soldier (NZEF Trooper 203453); while Joanna Preston’s great-uncle was an Australian ANZAC, not a New Zealander.
The second aspect is that all four poems are written by descendants of the serving soldiers, a great-niece, a son and two daughters, but not by the soldiers or nurses themselves. If we have a NZ Wilfrid Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, or Anna Akhmatova, his or her fame remains unsung.
