Battlefield Tourism by David W. Lloyd

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Having been on the wish list for many years this was a Christmas present :-)

Key within the exploration is the fuzzy distinction between “Tourism” and “Pilgrimage” - in the context of the battlefields many felt that being a ‘mere’ tourist was inappropriate and a dishonour to those that fought and died during the War.

The numbers of visitors in a era before mass foreign travel is remarkable, the mix of motivations for going complex and, like the decisions around creating War Memorials, contested.

The comparisons between Great Britain and Australia and Canada is useful, it is not simply the different geographical distance of those three places to the First World War battlefield that shaped the differing relationship to visiting them.

The level of snobbery that is evident, the concerns about working class visitors, is something that we have hopefully moved beyond, but then again it creeps into many contemporary political debates but perhaps dressed up in subtler clothes.

Guerrilla Brightenings by Joanna Nissel

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The poem It’s the only time I see them was shared on Fourteen Poems IG Live, and this is a COVID lockdown collection – the focus on walking on the beach at Brighton is somewhat enforced by those constrains. But in most COVID is an implicit rather than an explicit presence and this is likely to allow them an enduring effect beyond the immediate memory of the last couple of years.

Proprietary Poems By Randall Mann

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As always Randall delivers brilliant poems, with lots of light and shade, but somehow this collection overall felt darker than the earlier ones.

One of the poems:

ETIQUETTE

We had no latex love to give

in lighted, half-remembered scenes:

to hollow boys in acid jeans

who asked to lose their will to live.

Circumnavigation by Jane Routh

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I thought this was another collection found via a poem shared on the Fourteen Poem IG Live, but actually it was shortlisted for Forward Best First Collection in 2004 and so I think that is why I got it...

The Foot Thing and Kilo which are in the Forward book, I also tabbed A Good Job which is an authentic reflection on being a Grave Digger and Trace which ponders the meaning of “William & Edmund 1894” craved in a cow shed – do we turn to queer readings or as so often straight-wash the past and conclude they were just ‘good friends’?

A Comedian’s Prayer Book by Frank Skinner

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It feels rude to say that the power of this book comes from its un-sophistication – but many times I felt that Frank Skinner was giving voice to my own thoughts and puzzlement and the nature of God and religion.

Often we know the theological rationalisations but somehow they fail to answer the lived experience – and being given permission to ask God what the hell is going on is a real liberation. Or taking comfort in the “pious” actions and ritual which makes us better in ways that would probably be frowned upon by liturgical scholars.

It is good to have grown up conversations with God, thank you Frank for showing us how!

Borders & Belonging by Pádraig Ó Tuama and Glenn Jordan

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It should come as no surprise that I love a book written by Pádraig Ó Tuama, and the dialogue with Glenn Jordan only enriches that.

From one of the chapters by Glenn Jordan perhaps a summary of the whole…

“This is our big idea.

Kindness is more than just do-goodery…

Kindness is never naive about how the world is, It is a choice to love in the face of division.

Kindness is courage lived out. Maya Angelou said, “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”…

Kindness is never constrained by the rules. Kindness changes the rules. And laws. …

Kindness sees beyond divisions of ethnicity or politics or religion and finds the common good through service.”

Prefect Timing by Christopher Horton

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This collection, in part, responds directly to the experience of COVID – most powerfully in the poem Same Air, Repeat, Same Air – which explores the sense of isolation and of connectivity that was drawn to the forefront of our minds during the lockdowns.

I also particularly enjoyed Members Only which is about thinking you are the driver, sitting at the front window of the driverless DLR, something I have done, not only on the DLR but whenever I find myself on a train with a forward facing window :-)

The Backwater Sermons by Jay Hulme

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This is an amazing collection – I have put tabs in about a dozen of the poems but here is just one…

For a Short While

People like to write about Icarus,

but we forget that he flew,

for a short while, anyway;

and people like to write about Judas,

but we forget that he walked with God,

for a short while, anyway;

and people like to write about death,

but forget that we live,

for a short while, anyway;

and perhaps such things

are worth it, are worth

throwing it all away;

oh, what I’d give

to touch such dreams,

for a short while, anyway.