Today's Poet - Emily Bulcock, Australia

Emily Bulcock, (1877 - 1969) Australian - poet, writer and humanitarian.

French Women Poets of WW1

If you have been following my weblog, you will know that I am constantly seeking out poets.

Thanks to Chris Spreit in Belgium, I began looking for a few more French women poets yesterday and in particular - Adrienne Blanc-Peridier, Henriette Charasson, Cevile Perin and Henriette Sauret.   Oh the joys of the Internet - as I searched, I found mention of a Professor D.G. Mole who had organised a Conference on the subject in America in 2007.

Professor Mole very kindly sent me this reply to my query - for which I am extremely grateful:

"Works by Goldberg, Higgins, and Higonnet and studies by Chevillot/Norris, Khan, and Reilly are all essential reading to help you with the exhibitions, but you can profitably consult too Fell/Sharp, Gilbert/Gubar, Grayzel, O'Brien, and Ouditt".

Apart from Higonnet, whose book "Lines of Fire" is amazing, Khan and Reilley (whose books I read when I first began researching), I had not heard of any of the other writers.

As they say, "il y a du pain sur la planche"!

Onwards!

Facebook and today's poet . . .

Facebook gets a lot of adverse publicity, but there are some very good things about it - for instance with regard to researching WW1 there are some fantastic pages with dedicated, hard working people -

WW1 Buffs, Centenary News 1914 - 1918 and Wipers A Soldiers Tale are just a few.

Then there are the poetry groups - Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, May Sinclair - I have come into contact with some fantastic and very helpful people through those Pages.

Thank you all - as far as I am concerned that is the true spirit of Facebook and the Internet.

I also have to thank Dave of the Stow Maries WW1 Aerodrome for an idea he gave me - I woke up thinking of it this morning, which is, to my mind, a very positive sign.  Thank you Dave.  Find out more about Stow Maries Aerodrome on their website - http://www.stowmaries.com.  They, too, have a fantastic Facebook Page.

Today's poet, by the way, is Rose Auslander (1901 - 1988) - Rose was Austro-Hungarian.

Twitter ye not

I never thought I would do it but I have begun to tweet! (LucyLondon7).   I was trying to find something on the Internet about a lady called Evadne Price and the only person I could find was to be contacted via Twitter .

Then an idea came to me - I will go down my list of poets and tweet one each day.

For anyone interested in soldier poets, here is a link that has just been forwarded to me

http://archive.org/stream/forremembranceso00adcouoft#page/n9/mode/2up

which looks very good and mentions some poets I had not found previously - many thanks to Paul for that one and for his enduring support.

I am still looking for the two Russian women soldier poets I found mention of in the course of my research.

Today's Female Poet, incidentally, is Zoe Akins (1886 - 1958) an American, Pullitzer Prize-winning poet, playwright and author. For examples of her poetry, please see www.poemhunter.com

Saddening and humbling - 'the guilty landscape'

I just received this from Chris Spreit who, as I reported in an earlier blog, is hard at work putting the finishing touches to his poetry anthology.  I thought I would share it with you - although, strictly speaking it is not about women who wrote poetry during WW1, there are many such in Chris's book.

This is what he sent:

"http://www.uitzendinggemist.nl/afleveringen/1358747

I have just come across it while checking out a WW1 digital forum which I regularly go on.

The broadcast, in fact, is a follow-up item that has recently been shot as a sequel to an earlier item that dealt with the underground research which the famous British researcher Peter Barton executed in the vicinity of the Somme Hamlet of La Boisselle.

As I am sure you will all know, La Boisselle is in the neighbourhood of all those places where Edmund Blunden, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Edward Thomas and Wilfred Owen saw action. La Boisselle is only a couple of kilometres away from Beaumont-Hamel, Mesnil, Pozières, Serre, Auchonvillers and the Lochnagar Crater... It was practically at the rim of those tragical developments of the First Day of July 1916, which annihilated several of the Pals battalions (incl. the boys from Accrington). 

Even if you do not understand the bits in Dutch, I am certain you will pick up the bulk of what the broadcast wants to drive home from the way that Mr Barton comments on his findings and his reflections. 

At one stage Barton explains that, owing to the fact that the underground listening tunnels stretched out into the No Man's Land from both sides, the men were forced to dig the ground with their hands lest they should be heard by the opponent.

The Dutch presenter goes on to describe the placid and peaceful surroundings as 'the guilty landscape', knowing that there was so much relentless fighting there, which left so much death hidden somewhere under French soil. This immediately made me think of the title of Margi's Edmund Blunden poetry volume, 'The Deceitful Calm'.

Isn't this deceitful calm a perfect synonym of that guilty landscape? And aren't the 'skeletons in the cupboard' still, no matter if this is 100 years on or not?

In a recent article on the Ypres Salient, I read that approximately 200,000 dead might still be somewhere, anywhere, below French and Flemish soil. How saddening a thought, isn't it, and how humbling at the same time..."

I agree with Chris's sentiments entirely - "saddening and humbling at the same time..."  Thank you so much Chris.

The Landscape

Mary Riter Hamilton was the Canadian artist who was commissioned by the Canadian War Amputees Association to travel to France and Flanders in early 1919 in order to paint what she saw of the immediate aftermath of the War. 

Mary spent three years there, living in a little tin hut among the Chinese civilian workers who helped clear away the mess.   Her paintings show clearly how that 'guilty landscape' looked once the fighting had ended.   Mother Nature is kind and constantly replenishes what we humans destroy.

Mary Riter Hamilton's paintings are held by the Canadian National Archives and some of them can be viewed at www.collectionscanada.gc.ca

First World War Poets who nursed

My grateful thanks to Penelope Monkhouse in Germany for her hard work in finding German women poets, their poems and biographies.  With regard to German poets who nursed, Penelope has   

"found examples of H. Hardenberg´s poetry composed while working as a nurse. In her first poetry collection "Neigungen", published in 1918, there is a section called "Feinseligkeiten" with a series of poems in which she identifies with the suffering soldiers in her charge by speaking (imaginatively) in their voice.

There are also examples of using the soldier's voice in English women's poetry."

That is an extremely interesting and valuable point, definitely worthy of more research and discussion.

I have found several English and American women poets who nursed during WW1 and am currently looking for those of other nationalities, so Penelope's point is very valid.

I am deeply indebted to Penelope for her continuing support of the project.

Thanks also to Emma from Amsterdam for her help - Emma was the first person to get in touch with me regarding the project and her support is wonderful.

"Wij werden honderd jaaar ouder (We aged one hundred years)" An anthology of poems put together by Chris Spriet, Belgium

We always had to say "White Rabbits" on the first of the month in our house when I was growing up!

Thank you very much indeed to Chris Spriet from Belgium for letting me have a peek inside his forthcoming book.  I can't wait to read it.

 "Wij werden honderd jaar ouder (We aged one hundred years) will be published by Davidsfonds Leuven in September 2013 -  available at www.davidsfonds.be.

Chris Spriet says:

"Being the grandson of a civilian victim of the Great War I have had a keen interest in War Poetry for many years. For several years I taught seminars devoted to the War Poets, participating in a number of theatrical projects as well as Peace Tours to the Ypres Salient and the Somme. As a member of the Committee of the Friends of the In Flanders Fields Museum (VIFF) I have a set literature feature in VIFFflash, the magazine of our organisation. As a member of the War Poets Association, the Wilfed Owen Association, the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship and the Ivor Gurney Society, on several occasions I contributed articles to periodicals at home and abroad.

Here is the list of female poets whose work is included in my book as well as a survey of biographies:

Nancy CUNARD (US., Zeppelins)

Anna AKHMATOVA (Russ., In memoriam, July 1914)

Elinor JENKINS (The Last Evening)

Vera BRITTAIN (St Pancras Station, August 1915)

Jane CATULLE-MENDES (Fr., Qui? / Who?)

Helen MACKAY (Train)

Jessie POPE (War girls)

Edna ST VINCENT MILLAY (US, Conscientious Objector)

Elizabeth DARYUSH (US, Flanders Fields)

Theresa HOOLEY (War film)

Vera BRITTAIN (To my brother)

Eva DOBELL (Night Duty), one of my favourite poems

Andrea FRAHM (Germ., Zu Hause / At home)

Eleonora KALKOWSKA (Pol./Germ., Man tat uns dieses an / Dit deden zij ons maan / They did that to us)

Jeanne PERDRIEL-VAISSIERE (Fr., Complainte des filles qui ne seront pas mariées, Klaagzang van de meisjes die niet getrouwd zullen zijn/ Complaint of the girls who will never be married)

Margaret POSTGATE COLE (Falling leaves)

Vera BRITTAIN (Perhaps)

Henriette SAURET (Fr., Elles / They)

This poem stands out because it has survived history and anthologies in its maimed version. AS the poem was found to be too controversial to be acceptable to the (French) national censor, several lines and stanzas were scrapped, whilst the remainder of the poem was granted the right of publication. The poem has survived the Great War much in the same sense in which a handicapped or gassed war survivor did, ie, with the inclusion of the handicap or physical loss as a characteristic of the survival itself. Sauret's poem is very much a 'traumatized text'. On serveral occasions in the text it says '8 règles censurés, 8 lines censored,...) 

Sara TEASDALE, (US., 'And soft rains will come')

 It might strike you that, of many of these women poets' lives, only some sparse details have survived. Owing to her love relationship with the war poet Roland Leighton (1895-1915), Vera Brittain stands out. Immediately after Roland's untimely death, Vera broke off her academic prospects to go and serve as a VAD nurse in France. She wrote intense and compassionate poetry. After the War she continued to live a life of intense involvement in the causes of feminism, political justice and pacifism. She was the mother of Shirely Williams, who has been, for some time, chair of the British Liberal Democrats.

Edna ST VINCENT MILLAY was a well-known American poet who was greatly admired by a host of male suitors.

Helen Mackay was an intellectual woman of high class. Her poem "Train" depicts the wel-known iconographic scene of a Railway station, where the leaving of a soldiers for the front takes place.

I have also written several articles for the Edmund Blunden website www.edmundblunden.org and regularly review war-related books on Amazon.   I own a collection of over 2,000 books to do with the history, the cultural and literary heritage of the Great War."

Thank you very much indeed Mr Spriet.   Some of the poets you mention are already on my list but there are some new to me so I must get on and research them.

I look forward very much to reading your book.