Reading The Century - Middleton Event

Reading The Century at NO1 Riverside

Reading The Century at The Fusilier Museum

POEMS ON DISPLAY

Eileen Earnshaw and a selection of the poetry on display

Poetry submitted to our Reading the Century project are on display within the Digital War Museum section of Rochdale Central Library at No1 Riverside.

The scene is now set for the live poetry reading event which will take place in Rochdale on Gallipoli Centenary Day, Saturday 25 April 2015.  Further information about this event can be found here.

The poetry will be on display for several weeks and new submissions are welcome.

Reading The Century - Bury Event

Reading the Century - Rochdale Event

Stand To

In the Trench

STAND TOO!!
Morning orders, onto the step, guts churning, rifle ready,
steady, pupils mimicking the foraging rats.
STAND TOO!!
Stand close to the slimed, clay wall.
Close to the boy, my other, my brother,
who came here only yesterday, heart whole, cheerful.
Sharing a cake his mother baked, still fragrant in its tin.
CROUCH, LOOK OUT! But he, long knowing the sun as friend,
lifted his head, stopped, dropped, still smiling,
eyes no longer light with boys delight, face obscured by bloodied curtain.
I never knew his name, he was just another soldier.


Blessed night, no light, moonshine, star-shine,
Oh! Infinite darkness, cover me.
Suns probing search, discard me, reject me.
Expunge by brain of birdsong, childsong love song, laughter.
Make me as one with the earth,
as rat, as beetle, as disease ridden fly.
Plunge me into nothingness, Show me how to die.


Did you fly? 
There above the moil and muck, the stench of rotting tissue.
DID YOU FLY?
In that last dawn, that opal culmination of your days,
that SECOND when the bullet struck, smashed synapse.
Screwed nerve endings in hypoxic ecstasy. Did you fly?
In that shard of time, that splinter of infinity,
when your brain bled red, and you drowned in blood?
Was there sense of the countenance divine, his rivers, mountains,
his wondrous works.
In that second as your heart burst.
Did you fly?
And did you know him, praise him?
Did you offer our life to the god head?
Did ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ echo in your soul.
Did you believe in the cause, the sacrifice.
Did you become one with the majesty.
Did you fly?

© Eileen Earnshaw

Event Gallery

Eileen Earnshaw and some of the Reading The Century Gallipoli Centenary Poems
on display within the Digital War Museum at Rochdale Central Library

Painting by John Cooke displayed at the Digital War Museum No1 Riverside Rochdale

Part of the 21st Century Viewpoint display by John Cooke
at No1 Riverside Rochdale

21st Century Viewpoint by John Cooke at No1 Riverside Rochdale

It's Hundredth Year Sin' Waterloo, Mam

It's hunderedth year sin' Waterloo, Mam,
When all't regiments stood their ground
An now we're 'ere in Gallipoli, Mam,
Feightin' another round. 
Tha'll 'ave read about it in all't papers,
But now thee shall 'ere it from me:
It's a far longer battle nor Waterloo,
An there in't no victory.

Harry an' Tom an' Squintin' Dick, 
Are lyin' dead on W beach, Mam,
But Sam's OK and the rest, we pray,
Will fight on as best we can
To carry the war to Constantinople,
An' finish ' war in th' east,
So mi brother Bert in th' Flanders dirt
Can can hold back th' Hun at least.

But I miss owd Harry and Tom an' Dick,
An', Mam, I miss you all at 'ome;
I wish we'd get on wi' our victory parade,
Past Haggia Sophia's dome!
I'll send thee a postcard from Constantinople,
As soon as we feight our way through,
But this feightin's rough an' we aren't enough,
An this sure ain't Waterloo!  

© Michael Higgins

Reading The Century Event Gallery

Johnny Turk

Johnny Turk is a young Turk
     And a fine young man is he,
staring down on Suvla Bay and our dogged infantry,
staring down from Sari Bair on the heights we never took,
     for Johnny Turk is a young Turk
with a mean ferocious look.

I see him through binoculars,
     I see him in my sleep,
peeping through moustachios and a riflescope too deep,
peeping down from rock and cliff on my riflepit below,
     where I grease out particulars
of my Enfield cartridge stow.

I see him high above the smoke
     of our intermittent shells
as high explosive lands among us like thunderous funeral bells,
as high explosive rattles our heads and blows our headgear off,
     I see that raffish Turkish face
peer into my life and cough.

If we'd have been a bit more bold
     we'd have carried Suvla Bay,
but we weren't, and we lost, and we dug delay
into our trenches and lost the chance to meet
     my Johnny Turk, as things unfold,
in POW Street.

Johnny Turk is a young Turk,
     as he cocks his sniper piece,
staring down with disbelief as we abandon our trench with ease
staring down with disbelief as we board our boats and go
     for Johnny Turk is a young Turk
and caused our overthrow.

With a little help from the Ordnance Board
     and ill trained new recruits,
undersupply and a tactical lie in the chaos of Turkey Shoots,
undersupply and a tactical lie that trapped us down below,
     for Johnny Turk is a young Turk,
and I'm glad he let us go.  

© Michael Higgins

A Mother's Lament

Left in the wilderness in a foreign land
hearing only voices he does not understand
buried forever on a strangers shore
knowing for certain he’ll be home no more
how can she bear it, he's her beloved son.
Can't sit at his grave and weep,
now his life is done.

Cold comfort, that they’ll meet again,
only when her life’s over,
and her body lays like his,
but hers is this side of Dover.

© Catrina Barrett

 

Death of a Poet by Ian Whiteley

Canary Girl by Ian Whiteley

War Boys by Ian Whiteley

Home By Christmas by Ian Whiteley