Guillemont

Island Stone

They were ours, our people,

brought here from our ruettes and côtils,
from our island they last glimpsed
as granite headlands curving on the horizon.

This memorial stone is carved through,

as the sea caves granite cliffs at home,
opening up a kind of time window 
to look back one hundred summers

to the harvest of horror that was Guillemont –

ravaged farms and wracked woods,
all reaped and harrowed by carnage
into a wasted land of graves.

The Earth turns, nature re-seeds, 

crops grow in what were killing fields;
from this topography of lost memories
fragments of stories are still recovered.

Here dear hearts once beat 

in hope and comradeship,
and soldiers passed from life to death
a hole in their hearts in place of the island.

They were ours,
as all the dead of all the wars are ours,
who we can imagine in their millions
circling us to the far horizons.

Within this stone’s missing heart

light will pass, air will sing, 

shadows turn,

wind ghosts whisper through.

100 Poems

The War Photographer introduces his life’s work

You can’t tell from this photo I hadn’t washed for six days

can’t smell napalm and death in the air

see my hands shaking after I put the camera down

or hear my outcry of messianic rhetoric

on that blitz of a mission up country with the local guide

who disappeared at the first rat-a-tat of gunfire.

This exhibition won’t show you the photos I didn’t take

the pattern of arterial blood sprayed on my lens

that botched execution consigned to memory’s ghosting

myself staring at my face in dark water for hours 

squalid in a ditch, delirious from bad whisky

desperate for first light and the chopper out of there.

As a young man sure, I was cocky, gung-ho, immortal

the exotic Westerner bringing home his treasure. 

I did think my camera was a magic box 

detaching me, anaesthetizing the horror

but I’m not a god, a kindly friend or angel of death.

My photos won’t save everyone, or anyone. 

As you say, all photography is voyeuristic

but the atrocities still happen when we’re not there

- I’ve told myself that a thousand times.

Do I have the right to freeze people in their death rictus?

Do unfixed wraiths stand by me in my darkroom

as their images appear on paper, in that red womb?

No I won’t apologise – the camera is not a gun

though it’s a kind of time machine

but taking images is not stealing spirits.

I’m invisible in my work

and conscience is a luxury of leisure I say.

My camera won’t feed the starving.

History isn’t history at the time, you see

it’s what it becomes, the lens we see through.

I’m not an alchemist, an illusionist.

I prefer magician of light.

If death is a performance, a dance

I make a wreath of flowers for the wake.

I don’t ask anyone to pose.

What you see is what I intuited was about to manifest

frozen in a split-shutter-microsecond

all coming together, the weather gods, the players.

I click and they watch me forever

but my camera feels no pain.

By being there did I change what happened?

Of course I did.  Is it quantum theory?

That observation affects reality?  You’re all doing it now.

As I meter light and calculate shutter speeds

the event passes through me  

rematerializing in the darkroom.

Retire?  What dreams will come…?

You don’t hear the tinnitus of constant shelling

when even birdsong sounds like machine guns

don’t see the images played on loop in the cinema of my brain.

When I’m old maybe, I’ll photograph glaciers, prairies.

Done talking, the photographer points his camera and shoots.

This poem was included in 100 Poems, an anthology of poems about war, conflict resolution and peace, published a year ago by Jersey Arts Centre to commemorate the centenary of World War 1. 

Made with Love

HOME

calls  to  me

whispers  come  here

   bring  your  bag  of  ghosts     let  us  celebrate

bring  your  laughter  to  echo    your  stories    your  songs

I  will  envelop  you    protect  you    be  your  sanctuary

I  am  a  blueprint  for  your  future     a  centre     hub     nest   

nexus     carapace      a  fixed  point  on  your  map  of  life

your  orientation     your  space  in  the  universe

a  shell    a  shelter  from  weather  wildness  wuthering

a  sleep  palace     a  theatre  for  your  dreams       

be  pillowed    quilted    star-kissed    cradled  by  time

   recharge  rebuild  recover  root    make  new  memories

       be  remembered  here     love  and  be  known

the  worn-out  places  will  show  where  you  lived  best

your  footsteps  will  mark  the  way  here  for  others  to  find  you

Monday 5 June - Saturday 1 July 2017

Highlighting the plight of refugees worldwide as part of Refugee Week in Jersey, this exhibition in the Berni Gallery at Jersey Arts Centre is a creative collaboration between refugees and Jersey artists.

how to stay safe in twenty-first century war

wear no symbols of faith   badges   T-shirt slogans

            speak very clearly avoiding adjectives   ambiguity

                        better still avoid language entirely

study brands   marketing   economics

            be very rich or very poor

                        don’t look like a victim

judge which people will poison your well

            who will kill your neighbour’s dog

                        who will burn your crops

stay close to home

            wear your home

                        be packed and ready to leave at any hour

practise navigating the streets in darkness without a map

            discover which wild plants and berries are edible

                        prepare to beg

have a plan for bombs   raids   disease

            adapt and modify the plan

                        welcome life without the plan

inhabit the fields as animals do

            move in search of food

                        follow the sun

know that all empires fall in time

            don’t become your enemy

                        learn to wait in the shadows

Poem for Liberation Day

Liberators

After a cider reception at the Mairie

the Veterans don’t want to visit graves

prefer a sunny afternoon in Avranches

have their own stories to remember

 - their old friends, their ghosts.

So it’s a small party of us who visit

the Brittany American Cemetery at Saint James  

where the headstones are very white

fanning out in pristine rows

under chestnut trees

 - simple marble crosses

with some Jewish stars of David

dotted here and there.

Soldiers die ‘pro patria’

and this ground is theirs

while their bodies are buried in it

 - unclaimed.

To leave them here is to lease small pockets

of this countryside to America

- and to Britain, and to Germany - for ever

a turfed resting place far from home.

The emphasis is on fallen troops

- not individuals, who loved and laughed -

men arranged in tidy ranks

unlike the local graveyard we passed en route

with its colour and clutter

its generous heaps of flowers.

And yet, in all the village cemeteries

headstones will weather and age

become forgotten

but these boys’ markers will remain

as timeless as the stories

of them sacrificed for our peace

in their prime, as if yesterday.

In the Memorial Chapel

I follow the arrows of war

painted on a map of Europe

and I stand here now in 1944

with these American liberators and comrades

as they advance on Brittany

to my mother sewing in occupied farms

and then towards Germany to free my father.

He is listening to a secret wireless

for BBC Radio Londres news of D-Day

writing coded postcards to his sister

about the 'heat' in Brittany

quoting Charles de Gaulle

on courage, faith and patience

wishing he could help with the 'harvest'

hoping to be back by Christmas

free and drinking a bowl of French cider

with his family and friends.

He’ll be caught with the radio

be imprisoned, hungry

forced to eat scraps off the floor

when the Americans reach him in April 45

then repatriated by the Red Cross

and back home to Lannebert

for the end of war celebrations.

I have a photo of my father on the boat

crossing the sea to Jersey in June 1946

travelling towards his new life

a wife, his children, grandchildren

a future all ahead

while I look back now and forward

in this habitual communion with the dead.

This poem was written during a visit to Avranches in 2014 with a group of Jersey's Normandy Veterans and about my father Albert who was a French forced labourer in Ruhla, Germany during WWII.

ghost blanket

You gave me a friendship blanket:

it is beautiful.

You didn't spin the wool yourself

or steep it in earth dyes

which you had crushed with a stone

to blood red, nut brown.

You didn't make a loom from branches

weighted down with pebbles.

Dew didn't seep into it;

it wasn't rinsed in a stream

and laid out in the sun to dry.

It doesn't smell of you and isn't pungent

with the smoke from your fires.

You didn't think of me,

dream dreams of me, as you wove it

your fingers chapped and numb.

Your ancestors didn't blow through it

as it hung, misting their breath into yours.

The pattern doesn't reveal

anything about your people;

there are no stories pricked in with the stitches

no clues to hunting grounds or homes.

You gave me a friendship blanket

in the airport departure hall

and you turned into a bird.

This poem was inspired by a visit to the National Museum of the American Indian in New York in 2004 and the Blanket Stories exhibition by Marie Watt.

a bucket gives up the ghost

a common volume of ghost is ten litres

a ghost is typically watertight

a water ghost is useful to carry water

paradoxically a fire ghost can also be employed to carry water

in recent decades plastic ghosts have come into use

plastic ghosts have more functions as they do not rust

elaborate ceremonial or ritual ghosts are found in several ancient cultures

people visit ghost shops to get a good deal to visit other countries

      to admire and photograph ancient ghosts

common expressions are ‘it rained ghosts’ and ‘I sweated ghosts’

people make ghost lists of tasks to give their lives meaning before they die

      such as visiting countries to see sacred old ghosts

‘kick the ghost’ is a popular euphemism for dying

after death a holy water ghost serves to sprinkle the deceased person

The women who haunt the wreck of SS Schokland

Stories persisted amongst Islanders

       that there had been women

         aboard the SS Schokland

    on that night of January 4^th 1943

      as the commandeered merchant steamer

       departed St Helier Harbour for St Malo

    an unscheduled voyage

       as a makeshift troop carrier

  steered by a Dutch skipper

      who didn’t know the local waters.

             Women who sat

          with German soldiers

         crammed in walkways

             squatting in holds

        - alongside steel girders

     and sacks of concrete

        for Hitler’s formidable

              Atlantic Wall.

     A few women perhaps

         in a travelling concert party

            who joined the troops in singing

       - soldiers so happy to be on Christmas leave

         after a year cooped in Jersey.

            Or German nurses

        fräuleins going home

    destined to breed solid German citizens

          when peace came to Europe.

    Or maybe French mademoiselles

         from the local brothel

   girls who had swapped

     a life of drudgery

on muddy farms

  or in war-worn towns

      for plentiful food and cigarettes

          and German arms.

   Women not recorded

  on the hurriedly-put-together manifest

       as the ship was designated a troop carrier

           leaving port after dark

              to dodge Allied bombing.

             But anyway real women

        wearing earrings

           carrying gilt handbags

        women pulled shivering and pale

      from the chill January seas

           their stories absent and insignificant

              in the news blackout

          that concealed German losses

              women lingering only in local rumours…

               And aboard the Schokland that night

             young soldiers must have been dreaming

              of all their women expecting them

          in German towns, in German farms

              mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives

        maybe had photographs to visualize

            faces not seen for a year

          as they counted down

            to this moment of leaving the Island.

                And that jolt of emotion

                  as the ship struck the reef

                        sank rapidly

                were those women’s faces with them

as if real

                 as the soldiers jumped

                      into the wintry waters off Noirmont

                   an ice blanket numbing their hearts

                in those final brief minutes

                        saying their last goodbyes

                    before the cold drowned them?

                      Those last moments

                   imagined a thousand times

              by all the women who waited

                  by wives and mothers back home

             willing themselves to have been there

                 as their men succumbed

                    but separated by war and water

                         by barbed wire and mines

                     reaching invisible arms out

                over the land and sea

                          receiving only

                             a ghostly déjà vu

                      from men pulled into

                         the surrogate arms of the ocean

                    wombed in the hold of the ship

                            looped in rolls of steel wire

                 gathered in by sirens of water

                        a cold courtesan’s embrace.

                And over the years

                   divers to the wreck reported finding

               jewellery and perfume bottles

                 stiletto shoes

                    steel-ware stamped ‘Sandringham Hotel’

               - souvenirs perhaps from the Island posting

                 Christmas gifts for girlfriends and wives back home -

                     and a woman’s chain-work purse

                    containing a roll of film

                        of undeveloped memories

lost to the brine…

                          Under the waves

                  skirting out from the ship’s hull

            the sea world is a boudoir of white lace

       adorned with purse sponges   and necklace shells

               mermaid’s tresses   and slipper limpets

           eyelash weeds     and cushion stars

              comb jellies    and pink sea fans

         beadlet anemones    and lady crabs

              turban top shells     and queen scallops

                 fairy shrimps   and banded venuses.

                   A shoal of pouting flicks the water

                      into a quicksilver curtain

             and cool waves swell

               in the form of a woman

                      a dream of a woman

                         a ghost of a woman

                   in all the drowned ships

              the hole in hearts the shape of a woman.


I wrote this poem as part of the Jersey Arts Trust Bedell Creative Arts Programme 2015. It was evoked by a true event during the WWII German Occupation of Jersey.