Latest news
( to commemorate the casualties from the Allied bombardment of 22nd February 1943)
With thanks to Wikipedia commons
The Great War at Sea Poetry 'Weebly' website has now closed. Thank you to everyone who has offered support over the last three years. Posts from the website have been archived at
Worldwarpoetry.com
Have been very pleased to publish 'The World is a Broken Place' parts 1 & 2 ', interview with Professor John Guzlowski , and his writing about his parents' experience as Polish slave labourers during World War 2 and the family's subsequent lives as 'Polack' immigrants to the US. His last collection of poetry and short prose 'Echoes of Tattered Tongues' has already been reviewed on this blog a few weeks ago.
Full interview is also to be found at worldwarpoetry.com
I have written an article about the poetry of the North African campaign 1940-1943 which the Second World War Experience Centre (SSWEC) are considering publishing in their magazine 'Everyone's War'- and on line- later this year, Their website can be found here. SWWEC.
Keidrych Rees
image courtesy of the National Gallery
Photo of Kedrych Rhys taken in 1943.
Photo of Kedrych Rhys taken in 1943.
Currently reading Keidrych Rhys 'The Van Pool : Collected Poems' edited by Charles Mundye, published by Seren, 2012. Extremely helpful in supplying biographical information and also great to have a definitive collection of Rhys' work.
"Worse than branched antlers in the blood stream
Worse than the tapping pain of madness in the veins
For grieving mother's is her boy's death
In the smoke -plumed spinning reaches of smooth air."
'Lament '
This collection reprints the whole of the original book ' The Van Pool and Other Poems' that was first published in 1942. Further poems are added, along with translations from Welsh that Keidrych Rhys worked on.
Keidrych Rhys ( 1915- 1987) was born William Ronald Rees Jones, and took the name Keidrych Rhys in 1940. He served in the London Welsh Regiment as an anti-aircraft gunner after being called up in 1940, and was stationed in Kent during the Battle of Britain, later in Suffolk, and also at Scapa Flow. In 1943, Rhys was invalided out of the army after a spell at Northfield Hospital , near Birmingham, which specialised in treating psychiatric conditions.
Rhys was married to the poet Lynette Roberts from 1939- 1949. He edited the magazine 'Wales' from 1937- 1949, a publication crucial to the development of 'Anglo-Welsh' culture though there was a three year intermission due to the War from 1940-1943.:
"No, I'm not an Englishman with a partisan religion
My root lie in another region
Though ranged alongside yours' "
-'Tragic Guilt'
His contribution to World War 2 poetry is immense, Keidrych Rees edited an anthology titled ' Poems from the Forces' in 1941, and its successor ' More Poems From The Forces -A Collection of Verses By Serving Members of the Navy, Army and Air Force' published in 1943 .This anthology included some of Keith Douglas' earlier work (before the 'War in the Desert' poetry) , and also featured work by Alun Lewis and Gavin Ewart. By contrast to World War 1, it seemed that war poetry anthologies were slow to emerge in World War 2. 1943 also saw the publication of the classic anthology 'Oasis -The Middle East Anthology of Poetry from the Forces' ,a Cairo based initiative.
Death of a Hurricane Pilot
"But
Too late; the Pilot dead inside
An RAF officer soon came but interrogated nothing,
More concerned with the marvellous stress of aluminium
Gee what stress they take-wizard workmanship"
- 'Death of a Hurricane Pilot'
The Poem 'Death of a Hurricane Pilot ' is perhaps the most famous poem that Rhys wrote. Marking the death of a Belgian pilot Roger Emile d' Cannart D'Hamale fighting for Britain in the , 46 Sqdn, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, shot down over Kent on 1st November 1940 . He subsequently was re-buried at the Brussels Town Cemetery Belgian Airmen's Field of Honour. Rhys' poem depicts a scene of indifference to the fate of the dead pilot. An RAF official is more interested on the crash landing's impact on the plane's wreckage. The behaviour of the rest of the crowd is worse.
"Children, ghastly souvenir hunters, forty yards away, kick the skull."
Keidrych Rhys was friends with some of the literary luminaries of the time. Dylan Thomas was his best man, borrowed a suit from fellow poet Vernon Watkins for the occasion. Rhys also managed to maintain a presence with the Fitzrovia literary set whilst stationed in Kent, and was therefore ideal to develop what we would now call a network to stimulate the genre of World War 2 poetry.
But in regard to World War 2 related literature, he somehow lost momentum . Something made him move away from a role of being a literary advocate for World War 2 poetry. And his work offers us a clue- 'Poem Being Invalided Out Of Army ' -which was written long after the 'Van Pool' collection - refers to " Terrible accusing patterns " that seem ingrained to a discharged man's mind, making him belong to a category of
" despised anonymous personalities
admonished by the other half from whose callous sanity
the whole mad recognising world is unanimous in self-redemption."
A review of Lynette Roberts collected poems by Alan Tucker, written in 2010 , which suggested that Rhys had gone AWOL in 1942. If correct, Keidrych Rhys would be the only other known World War 2 poet to have absconded besides Vernon Scannell.
Keidrych Rhys, as a literary editor, went on to promote the work of R.S. Thomas and John Cooper Powys. Along with Lynette Roberts, he encouraged Robert Graves writing of 'The White Goddess' . Three provisional extracts from this book were published in the magazine 'Wales'.
A longer article about Keidrych Rhys will follow.
For more information
http://www.walesartsreview.org/the-van-pool-the-collected-poems-of-keidrych-rhys/
https://www.serenbooks.com/productdisplay/keidrych-rhys-van-pool-collected-poems
http://www.bbm.org.uk/airmen/dHamale.htm
Lynette Roberts
http://www.flashpointmag.com/tucklyn.htm
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