Kate Noakes considers Jane Clarkeās new pamphlet in which she takes on the challenging task of writing war-related poetry
All the way Home
Jane Clarke
Smith|doorstop
ISBN 978-1912196685
42pp Ā£6
In the midst of death ā in this case the carnage of the First World War ā we are in life. Jane Clarke has written this suite of poems based on her time at the Mary Evans Picture Library in Lewisham. While there she looked at a family archive, specifically the letters of a serving solider, Albert Auerbach, to his sister, Lucy. Albert made it almost to the end of the war and was killed by a shell in September 1918. With this promising trove of material Clarke has woven a tender tale.
Yes, there is the mention of the gruesome nature of war, even during the famous Boxing Day 1916 football match, where she speaks of the wounded players āStill hot/their bodies were stretchered/from the pitch.ā But mostly the over-riding impression is the search for beauty from the (un)natural world in the images she chooses.
The opening and closing poems are concerned with apple trees. The first speaks of the harvest in 1914 ā(we) laid them one by one/ on the dusty floorboards in the attic,ā and towards the end of the book is a poem about the spring pruning in the year after Albert died. I would have preferred this to be the final poem in order to bookend the sequence, especially as the actual last poem, āRowanā, is the tiniest of notes. In between there are some lovely things ā for example, these thoughts of future farmers levelling the fields in āAfter Weāre Goneā
Theyāll never know one of the lads
keeps celandine and meadowsweet
in a whiskey glass by his pallet,
another passes the time at the parapet
naming the flowers in his motherās garden;ā¦
I liked the search for sphagnum moss told by a hospital doctor: āknee-deep in Clara Bog,/ā¦picking out twigs and leaves,/beetles, dragonflies, frogsā¦ā. These images make for a connection with Lucyās farm work, which features in poems on milking and chopping wood. And nature arrives directly the trenches in āA sprig of heather falling from my sisterās letterā in āLingā.
There is much wishful looking forward and wishing to get away: āIn the Dugoutā, where the troopsā future plans change from the fanciful to the ordinary ā āa drink in the localā etc. as the war progresses; and āWhen All This is Overā, where the wish is to follow āa path/though silver birch and pineā to listen for the shepherd and his flock, look for grasses and ācatch the scent of crushed chamomile lavender thymeā.
Clarke has a precise and vivid eye for the natural world, but she does not seek refuge there and there are hard hitting poems like āBouchavesnesā, which describes grave digging for the recently fallen, or āRefugeeā, which is about a woman who somehow took her piano with her as she escaped.
There is much to enjoy, if that is not the wrong word, in this pamphlet and the photographs from the archive that accompany the poems are interesting and not always, thank goodness, directly illustrative. My worries are though that the poems are rather short; they are little meditations, tiny stories where there is surely so much more to say. I think here more could easily have been more and thatās a pity.
London Grip Poetry Review – Jane Clarke
August 10, 2019 by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, poetry reviews, year 2019 • Tags: books, Kate Noakes, poetry • 0 Comments
Kate Noakes considers Jane Clarkeās new pamphlet in which she takes on the challenging task of writing war-related poetry
In the midst of death ā in this case the carnage of the First World War ā we are in life. Jane Clarke has written this suite of poems based on her time at the Mary Evans Picture Library in Lewisham. While there she looked at a family archive, specifically the letters of a serving solider, Albert Auerbach, to his sister, Lucy. Albert made it almost to the end of the war and was killed by a shell in September 1918. With this promising trove of material Clarke has woven a tender tale.
Yes, there is the mention of the gruesome nature of war, even during the famous Boxing Day 1916 football match, where she speaks of the wounded players āStill hot/their bodies were stretchered/from the pitch.ā But mostly the over-riding impression is the search for beauty from the (un)natural world in the images she chooses.
The opening and closing poems are concerned with apple trees. The first speaks of the harvest in 1914 ā(we) laid them one by one/ on the dusty floorboards in the attic,ā and towards the end of the book is a poem about the spring pruning in the year after Albert died. I would have preferred this to be the final poem in order to bookend the sequence, especially as the actual last poem, āRowanā, is the tiniest of notes. In between there are some lovely things ā for example, these thoughts of future farmers levelling the fields in āAfter Weāre Goneā
I liked the search for sphagnum moss told by a hospital doctor: āknee-deep in Clara Bog,/ā¦picking out twigs and leaves,/beetles, dragonflies, frogsā¦ā. These images make for a connection with Lucyās farm work, which features in poems on milking and chopping wood. And nature arrives directly the trenches in āA sprig of heather falling from my sisterās letterā in āLingā.
There is much wishful looking forward and wishing to get away: āIn the Dugoutā, where the troopsā future plans change from the fanciful to the ordinary ā āa drink in the localā etc. as the war progresses; and āWhen All This is Overā, where the wish is to follow āa path/though silver birch and pineā to listen for the shepherd and his flock, look for grasses and ācatch the scent of crushed chamomile lavender thymeā.
Clarke has a precise and vivid eye for the natural world, but she does not seek refuge there and there are hard hitting poems like āBouchavesnesā, which describes grave digging for the recently fallen, or āRefugeeā, which is about a woman who somehow took her piano with her as she escaped.
There is much to enjoy, if that is not the wrong word, in this pamphlet and the photographs from the archive that accompany the poems are interesting and not always, thank goodness, directly illustrative. My worries are though that the poems are rather short; they are little meditations, tiny stories where there is surely so much more to say. I think here more could easily have been more and thatās a pity.