War Poetry - with a difference.

At the risk of being accused of heresy, I will confess to a certain glazing-over of the eyes when encountering the words "first world war poetry". Some of the poetry is memorable, of course, but some is best passed over. When I came across Tim Kendall’s new 'Poetry of the First World War: An Anthology', I thought "another First World war poetry anthology? Surely there are plenty in the bookshops already?". A new offering needs to be pretty special to justify its existence. Luckily this one is very good, partly because it does not follow the usual pattern of arranging the poems thematically or chronologically, or both. In this anthology, all the examples of one poet’s work are put together, and the poets are arranged by order of birth date. This has the effect of placing the emphasis on the poetry rather than on a narrative of the war. The poems have been selected for their literary qualities rather than their documentary interest and this arrangement works for me as I found I was appreciating familiar poems once again.As you might expect, all the names we learned at school are here: Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon (who was, fleetingly, in the Sussex Yeomanry at the same time as my grandfather) There is also Edward Thomas, whose lines:

No one cares less than I,
Nobody knows but God,
Whether I am destined to lie
Under a foreign clod

strike me, and probably many others, as being the antithesis of Brooke's corner of a foreign field:

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.

Through the work of  Owen, Brooke, Sassoon et al we think we know the poetry of this war but it is the unfamiliar that makes this book so interesting. Who has heard of Edgell Rickword, Wilfrid Gibson, David Jones, Ivor Gurney or Mary Borden? All well thought of in their day but now largely forgotten. Read them and come across poems with such evocative lines as these:

I knew a man, he was my chum,
But he grew darker by the day,
And would not brush the flies away
(Rickword: Trench Poets) 

I shall be mad if you get smashed about
We've had good times together, you and I
(Rickword: The Soldier Addresses His Body)

As an unexpected bonus this anthology includes, in a final section, a compilation of songs from the trenches and music halls of the time. There is black humour and grim laughter in this section but with no less feeling than anything in the preceding pages.

And finally, I have to say how much the schoolboy in me was delighted to come across A.P. Herbert’s song of resentment against the officious martinet General Cameron Shute. Here it is in its entirety:

The General inspecting the trenches
Exclaimed with a horrified shout
'I refuse to command a division
Which leaves its excreta about.'

But nobody took any notice
No one was prepared to refute,
That the presence of shit was congenial
Compared to the presence of Shute.

And certain responsible critics
Made haste to reply to his words
Observing that his staff advisors
Consisted entirely of turds.

For shit may be shot at odd corners
And paper supplied there to suit,
But a shit would be shot without mourners
If somebody shot that shit Shute.