Treasuring Poetry Special Remembrance Month Edition: Poet, Frank Prem, discusses his war poetry #poetrycommunity #warpoetry #TreasuringPoetry

Today, I am delighted to welcome prolific and masterful poet, Frank Prem, back to Treasuring Poetry. Frank writes incredibly relatable poetry that covers a wide variety of topics relevant to modern life including the bush fires that raged in Australia a few years ago, Devil in the Wind, working as a psychiatric nurse in an institution, The New Asylum: A Memoir of Psychiatry, as well as collections about war. I have read Frank’s beautiful and moving collections about World War 1, Sheep on the Somme, and the war in the Ukraine, From Volyn to Kherson: Interpretations of the War in Ukraine. Frank also writes romantic poetry, interpretive modern poetry and verse books for children. In the nicest way, nothing is safe from Frank’s poetic pen.

Tell us a bit about your war poetry collections

I developed an interest in the First World War many years ago and was particularly interested in the stories of Australian soldiers and their seeming need to volunteer to fight half a world away on the basis of loyalty to the British Empire and the Mother Country that was England, but also on the basis of a kind of chivalric principle. A moral fever that swept the nation.

I came across books that were written in the more modern historical style of telling stories to illustrate events – using the example of an identified soldier, from an identified town, with family details and background, then tracing their movements into the war and its various theatres and actions.

I found I was able to understand these individuals a little better and to empathise with them and their loved ones a little more than I otherwise could.

I also found myself interested in using images for my own poetic inspiration and that led me to the images held by Australia’s War Memorial. There was one image in particular that started me looking at pictures taken during the war. The image was of a white cross in a field of muddy and bloody craters. The cross marked the grave of Captain Ivor Margetts, much loved and respected by the men he led in battle. By the following day the cross and the grave were gone. They’d been blown to hell by the shelling.

I was tremendously moved by this, and as I searched for a version of that particular image online, I encountered many more, each with a poignant story to tell and many were destined to feature in my book Sheep On The Somme (https://www.amazon.com.au/Sheep-Somme-World-Picture-Poetry/dp/1925963144 ).

More recently, I found myself watching the sabre rattling over the Ukraine that was being perpetrated by Russia and was reminded very clearly of reading I’d done long ago about the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War back in the late 1930s and of the rise of Right-Wing Fascism in Europe during that same period of the 1930s. I was struck by the similarities and the ways in which those events and movements evolved into what became World War II. It was – and remains – quite concerning to see these way events continue to unfold.

As the news and pictures of Russia’s military build-up on the Ukraine border kept emerging, along with the seeming inability on the part of Ukraine to do anything to stop it, I watched events more and more closely.

When Ukraine’s borders were finally breached, there were more photographers and journalists on the spot than has ever been the case previously in a conflict. We were flooded with formal and informal news and masses of un-curated and un-censored images.

During the first nine weeks of the conflict I became engrossed in reading the news and studying the images. And – of course – I began to write.

I produced 3 volumes of poetry interpreting the Ukraine war – two of them will not be released because they used images taken by journalists in the field and I don’t have rights to use those images. The volumes (Bullets Into The Starichi Sky and I Call The Hole The War) sit on my private bookshelf here in my writing studio.

The third volume – From Volyn to Kherson – is a collection of poems in which I have attempted to use such talent for empathy as I possess to interpret the news stories I was reading in a way that enabled any of my own readers to get a sense of what the invasion and the conflict was like as an experience for the everyday people of Ukraine. What if it happened here, in my town? What would it be like to have seventy kilometres of armoured assault vehicles coming to surround and destroy my home town? Or yours?

I like readers to know where the inspiration for these writings has come from and so each individual poem is referenced and has a link to the online sources that I relied on in my writing. After nine weeks I was a little burnt out and had to stop writing, but I follow events over there diligently and worry about what I see happening in the wider world and which still so resembles the events of the 1930s.

What draws you to writing about wars?

I’ve encroached a little on this question with my answer above, I think, but I’ll try to elaborate a little more.

In my professional life I was a psychiatric nurse. Back (so many years ago) when I was a student nurse one of the areas of interaction with patients that was taught and stressed was empathy.

As I understood it, empathy was the ability to walk in another person’s shoes. To see things from the perspective of the other person, but not to necessarily sympathise, or accept, merely to understand in order to be able to reflect that understanding back to the patient.

The patients that came my way in psychiatry were invariably involved in and generally overwhelmed by personal chaos. This might have been due to illness, or it might have been due their life being in a mess they could not resolve. They might have been psychotic, depressed, suicidal, or experiencing any number of out-of-control situations.

That tool of empathy has stayed with me, I think, and now reveals itself in my writing. The experience of chaos by a person finds itself being reflected back in my writings.

I think it is in this way that I am attracted to attempt to unravel what a person may be feeling or experiencing in a war zone. Similarly, I find myself writing a lot about the human toll of natural disasters that come close to me or to my little place in the world.

I have always tried to develop my understanding of these things by writing my way through them. To help myself and any subsequent reader to understand by feeling what is happening through my words.

Tell us a bit about how you use photographs and newspaper articles to assist with writing your war poems

With newspaper articles, I try to extract the meat of the story. That part of the article that is the actual purpose – the reason that it is a story in the first place.

Often enough, there is human interest in the genesis of the article. I then allow the information to assemble itself in a way that I can present it to a reader. For example

What is grandmother doing in the kitchen? Is she cooking Sunday lunch? No. She is cooking Molotov cocktails for others to throw at invading vehicles. And . . . wouldn’t you or I, each do the same if this was happening in our back yard?

With an image, I anticipate that it will have a story to tell. I try not to impose myself and my own current thoughts or fears or desires on it, but to allow the story to be whatever comes.

For example, a golden paper daisy with a bright glow might well have a story to tell that reflects light, and the sun. But equally, it might be a harbinger – a prophet of some kind that draws attention to itself in order to be heard. I don’t know in advance what the story will be, but I try to keep myself out of its road and not to shape the narrative too much.

I have come to know, also, that each image will have a different story to tell to each viewer, so to the extent that I can, I try to facilitate a receptive space for that to occur through what I end up writing. I’ll give an example of how I find a story in a tiny image taken during wartime over a hundred years ago.

The image above is the view from inside a German army dugout in World War I – around 1916. It is from within this space that a small group of individuals fought their war.

When I look at this image, I notice a few things and I feel a few things. In no particular order:

• From pitch darkness up into light. A very small doorway.
• Claustrophobia.
• Fear.
• The smell of habitation. Bodily odours – where would the latrine have been?
• The knowledge of death and destruction and battle rage just outside
• Movement of the ground as shells fall outside. Perhaps close.
• Maybe the sound of enemy troops approaching the bunker to destroy it.
• What of family. Has this soldier (have I) written them a note to say goodbye?

I don’t have a personal experience of war, but I know what fear feels like. I know claustrophobia and the smells of my own body . . . and so on. I can draw on these to understand a little of what the soldier in the dugout might have felt.

The willingness to engage with these elements that come from the image allow me to engage my empathy and to allow a story – which the image itself contains – to be told.

What is your own favourite war poem?

I think that my personal favourite of my own written war poems is one that hasn’t featured in a book to date, but was written to be read for a spoken-word poetry slam 2 years ago. The criteria were that it needed to be 2 minutes reading time or less and to include the term ‘full circle’.

The poem told stories in word pictures and referenced images, without actually including them, if that makes sense. I have since recorded it for my YouTube channel and included there the images that the poem references, spanning both World War I and the current Ukraine war.

The link to the poem on YouTube is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI3vRaTg0tI .

The text of the poem is below:

THE TRUTH OF TIME

(AS TOLD BY THE PICTURES)

picture 1

a group

of soldiers

are hanging out

of the doors

and windows

of a moving train

leaving Egypt

heading

to the western front

ready

for a stoush

a bit

of a barney

it’s time

to come to grips

with the enemy

and they’re cherry ripe

for a

blue

picture 2

dimitriy

is holding olga –

tightly –
on the platform

a blue train

is nearly ready to leave

she’ll go

to poland

across the border

dimitriy

will join his friends

in the territorials

a week

to practice

how to hold a rifle

and to learn

first aid

then away

he must forget

to be an accountant

he’s

a front-line fighter

now

picture 3

a heap of rubble –

bricks

and half-bricks

timber and concrete

and dust –

lies as a mound

among mounds

it is

a streetscape

an avenue

of homes

destroyed by artillery

a soldier –

rifle

slung over a shoulder –

picks his way

toward camera

there is nothing left

that might hold

use

or meaning

picture 4

the village near kyiv

is a series

of mounds

rubble

that was homes

and houses

a month or so

ago

a woman

is sifting

searching

for something –

anything –

that might

have a use

it’s all been destroyed

by missiles

and artillery

she hasn’t found

a lot

that will be helpful

~

pictures

pictures

they won’t

let me sleep

in the night

they shout at me

that we have come

full circle

and the ukraine

is in 1916 all over again

Who is your favourite war poet?

I can’t honestly say I have a favourite war poet, but I have read with a deep sense of connection stories such as All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque with its empathy for the soldiers of the day. Here is the Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Quiet_on_the_Western_Front .

What is your favourite war poem?

I’m aware of many of the great poet writers of the First World War, such as Owen, Sassoon, Brook and Graves, among others, but for my response to this question I have to refer you and readers to a song that I first encountered back when I was a teenager (50 years, who would ever have thought . . .).

The song was performed by a wonderful English Folk ensemble called Steeleye Span, and the song is called Fighting For Strangers. Here is the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI3vRaTg0tI

YouTube Links

In addition to the links given above, I would welcome viewers, new followers (if any so desire) comments and feedback on my YouTube Channel, where there a re a number of video readings from my war poetry collections (and natural disasters and psychiatry and others). Click on the link below to be taken along to the Playlists available on the Channel.

https://www.youtube.com/@frankprempoetandauthor726/playlists

Robbie and readers, thanks so much for having me along to chat for November’s Treasuring Poetry post.

My review of From Volyn to Kherson: Interpretations of the War in Ukraine

This book is a ‘hard’ read. It exposes the realities of war; the filth, the noise, the fear, and the destruction and death. No civilian wants war, it is something that is imposed on individuals because of factors outside of the man on the street’s control. Civilians, however, bear the brunt of war as the women lose their husbands and sons. The entire population generally loses its collectively homes, food stability, economic stability, access to sanitation, food, and healthcare. Many countries and populations never recover from wars and their populations become unwanted refugees. The sympathy of the unaffected world shrinks rapidly when wars and the resultant refugees impacts on their economies, making the slices of the economic pie for their own populations smaller.

The war in Ukraine hit me especially hard when I read about the Russian soldiers who froze to death in their tanks. Although the Russians were the instigators and aggressors in this war, many of those young men are the same ages as my own two sons, and their dreadful fate couldn’t fail to stir compassion. Young men frequently have a glamorous and inaccurate picture of war when they enlist or are called up. The realities of war quickly displace these notions but it is already too late.

A few stirring stanzas from this collection of freestyle poems:

From fallen (quietly weeping)
“here it is safe

safe enough
to shed
a tear”

From the metro (is also home)
“let the fear
fall away
for a moment while
the anthem
sounds”

From vasylkiv (is fighting on)
This footnote made me shiver: “People used to think about new car or iphone, but nobody was thinking about peace. Now, we are dreaming of it. When old people used to wish each other peace, we didn’t understand what they meant. Now we do.”

and finally, from in okhtyrka (the tsentral’ne)
“they are preparing
the cemetery now
in okhtyrka

adriy
and his platoon
are gone

vacuum bombed

air taken
out
of them

and then
they died”

This is a beautiful and emotion book of poems that will change the way you view war forever.

You can find out more about Frank Prem here:

You can find out more about Frank Prem on his website here: https://frankprem.com/

and on his wordpress blog here: https://frankprem.wordpress.com/blog/

On amazon US here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Frank-Prem/author/B07L61HNZ4

About Robbie Cheadle

Award-winning, bestselling author, Robbie Cheadle, has published fourteen children’s books and two poetry books. Her work also features in several poetry and short story anthologies.

Robbie also has two novels published under the name of Roberta Eaton Cheadle and has horror, paranormal, and fantasy short stories featured in several anthologies under this name.

The eleven Sir Chocolate children’s picture books, co-authored by Robbie and Michael Cheadle, are written in sweet, short rhymes which are easy for young children to follow and are illustrated with pictures of delicious cakes and cake decorations. Each book also includes simple recipes or biscuit art directions which children can make under adult supervision.

Robbie and Michael Cheadle have recently launched a new series of children’s books called Southern African Safari Adventures. The first book, Neema the Misfit Giraffe is now available from Amazon.

Robbie’s blog includes recipes, fondant and cake artwork, poetry, and book reviews. https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/

You can find example of Robbie Cheadle’s artwork in her art gallery here: https://www.robbiecheadle.co.za/art-gallery/