11 Poems About the First World War

Controlled Explosion Press, 2014
16 pages, £1
ISBN 978-0-9573474-3-4

A sequence of 11 poems, each 11 lines long, as seen through the eyes of a ‘war tourist’ visiting the battlefields in modern times, walking the ground and trying to find some sense and meaning in the details of the silent, peaceful landscapes as they are today; dotted with white cemeteries and restored trench systems, populated with ghosts and tidy monuments to futility.

The content of this tiny collection has memorial, documentary, reportage, not to say occasionally voyeuristic qualities which both demand and repay thoughtful reading. This is a collection which asserts that it is still possible to have a fresh voice on the First World War.’

Northwords Now

Insightful language plays on the horrors of Europe’s battlefields ...the war tourist too becomes involved, his senses travelling back in time, hearing the carnage; seeing ‘reflections in the water’, feeling ‘a wire of seat trickling down’ his back as his camera becomes a rifle.’

Gutter