For UK National Poetry Day 2022, here is a fantastic reflection on ephemera in war poetry by our summer research intern Joel Everett.
My role in the War Ephemera project has been as a student researcher, taking note of where ephemera appears in the poetry of the First World War and (although with less emphasis) modern conflicts. I sorted and categorised the ephemera into an online database, a process which required an analytical approach. However, as is always the case with literature, a binary approach to this task would have been unsatisfactory, and so I attempted to involve myself in the poetry as much as possible. I began the research by looking at online poetry databases: these databases had a wide variety of poets to look at, including translated poetry, which enriched the findings of the research by giving alternative perspectives from the British, Irish, and North American poets who have mostly been focussed on. The online databases were extremely useful for this reason, but they were also slow to navigate, and so took a long time to process any findings… I was therefore relieved to get my hands on physical media, as I’m sure many can relate to.
War holds a unique psychic space within Literature, trapped between the juxtaposing ‘fronts’ of beauty and humanity, and ugliness in so many aspects. Navigating this ‘no-man’s land’ proved more challenging and reflective than I would have initially – perhaps naively – imagined that it would. Certain poems stood out amongst the others due to the seriousness of their content, namely ‘Suicide in the Trenches’ by Siegfried Sassoon. Although every poem was tragic, this poem left a heavy impression on me. In this poem and others (‘The Next War’ by Osbert Sitwell is a notable example) it became abundantly clear that the poets shared a sense of futility; due to the needlessness, and the inevitability of war. The trauma of war would (and will) be experienced by every successive generation, unless there is a monumental shift in our value for life, and the treatment of others. The trauma of war creates anger, and anger leads to violence – so we find ourselves in a feedback loop of suffering, doomed to keep making the same mistakes, until we go too far. Sassoon suggests that facing the realities of war is enough to deter the ‘smug-faced crowds’ from celebrating war participation, and with the ever-increasing anti-war movement we see today this may be partially true. War, however, continues regardless.
One thing that the poets I encountered, almost unanimously, agreed upon is that the blame for war ought to lie directly at the feet of the institutions of government and the military complex. Edward Thomas encapsulates this sentiment with the lines ‘I hate not Germans, nor grow hot / With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers. / Beside my hate for one fat patriot / My hatred of the kaiser is love true’, here recognising that countrymen are used as pawns on both sides. It therefore makes sense that my research found most ephemera in the poetry were an escape from the war, focussing on individuals and personal relationships from home: the clear majority came in the form of personal letters, followed by photographs.
After reading about the most violent and ungenerous actions of men, it would have been easy to get bogged down, to feel as though humanity was hopeless. Hope, however, came in many forms, such as the gentle strength and perseverance of a flower, or even in the actions of men, when they would plant flowers on the graves of the fallen: an important reminder that destruction is essential for the creation of something new – that death is a prerequisite for rebirth.
My favourite instance of ephemera within the research would have to be ‘His Latch-Key’. The poem, written by John Oxenham (the pen name of William Arthur Dunkerley), tells the story of a soldier’s wife who, having been sent her husband’s keys, was missing one – the key for the latch-door – so that he would be able to let himself in and surprise her on his return. Unfortunately, this charming, romantic gesture is left unfulfilled when the soldier is instead buried with it in his possession. The poem (written in 1917) is based on another piece of ephemera – a letter from the front, which read:
“I am sending you all my keys except the latch. That I will keep, so that some day, when I get leave, I may walk in on you unexpectedly and give you a surprise”.
The poem is available in Oxenham’s The Vision Splendid (1917), which has online versions available in The Internet Archive. Alternatively, the poem is available in International Poetry of the First World War: An anthology of Lost Voices (edited by Constance M. Ruzich), which I can highly recommend.