I’ve been doing some more reading and research after last week’s blog post on Sdney Greenfield. He was awarded the MC in July 1918. The citation as published in the London Gazette on 18th July reads “2nd Lt. Sidney Richard, Greenfield, North’d Fus. For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. As intelligence officer,when all communications…
I have a couple of items of poetry reading lined up for the weekend. The first is Clare Best’s poem, Cell, which will unfold into a cell with artwork by Michaela Ridgway. I’ve been saving this up until I had enough time to read it properly. I was going to describe this as a poetry…
During this year’s battlefield’s tour with Jeremy Banning we went back to the area around the Wancourt tower above the river Cojeul. I had a vivid memory from a previous occasion of Jeremy reading Second Lieutenant Sidney Greenfield’s account of part of the battle of Arras and the capture of the tower. This October as…
I had the pleasure of introducing Matt Merritt at Ouse Muse this week and hearing him read from his two collections from Nine Arches Press. I had already browsed my way through The Elephant Tests and as so often happens have gone back to the poems with even more enjoyment through having the poet’s voice…
This year’s annual trip to the Somme battlefields included a visit to the Cambrai memorial at Louverval. I’ve written about Charles Jagger previously on this blog and about his work in poems in Voices from Stone and Bronze so I was keen to see the two Portland stone reliefs which he’d created for the memorial.…
I’ve been busy for the last couple of Fridays with poetry related activities in Aldeburgh and North Wales so haven’t had a chance to share a Friday poet recently. I’ve come back from Wales with Becky Cherriman’s glorious Empires of Clay. It is so exciting to get my hands on this book. There is sometihng about…
One of the benefits of having a dog is that you get to go on regular walks and so over the past year I’ve got to know the footpaths around the village very well. What I have noticed this autumn is the abundance of crab apple trees in the hedgerows. Almost every field seems to…
November is German Literature Month so I am about to make a start on reading All for Nothing – Alles Somst, which is this month’s title for the war and lit readalong. It’s described as Walter Kempowski’s crowning achievement and to judge from the opening chapter it is going to be a dark and compelling…
October has been a busy and productive month with four readings, culminating in the launch event for the CEGC ‘Cultural Exchange in a Time of Global Conflict’ project in the Maughan libraryat King’s College London. I read three commissioned poems, inspired by the lives of Wanda Gertz and Frederik van Eeden. The other poets were…
If you haven’t already bought a copy of Spacecraft by John McCullough then I would urge you to do so without delay. I’ve been reading and re-reading it since it was published in the spring but because I’ve been busy recently what with the trip to France and writing some commissioned poems that it has…