Blue Nose Poet Mario Petrucci talks about his new role at the Imperial War Museum in London
BETWEEN THE LINES - WAR AND PLACE
My mother. Stumbling upon a disembowelled eleven-year-old in her grandfather's olive grove. She still refers to him as her "little christ". The peasant woman, standing vigil in the ruin of her shack, desperate for her husband's return - only to miss him by seconds. The curses hurled like grenades at "ruinator" soldiers; which came to pass, so that certain villages even now believe those phrases to invoke the devil.
Thus was my boyhood steeped in two Histories: English History appended in me via book and schoolroom; and the history sown freely by uncles and paesani at wedding receptions, funerals and smoky card-tables. These histories simply didn't match. Or rather, they were as different to me as observing a flu virus in an electron micrograph, and then sensing, seeing, feeling that invader at work in my own body. Certainly, the post-rationalisations of literary generals and the staged messiness of text-book "war" had little to do, it seemed, with the casus belli behind those family stories. Was human behaviour so divorced from itself, so neatly compartmentalised through time, class, social-military role, place?
In the context of Poetry Places it seems vital to salvage "place" (in war) from its mere designation as a site of historical military events. My own family abandoned Monte Cassino in central Italy shortly after WWII, but the cultural, material and psychological devastation (symbolised for me by the famous images of the bombed abbey) survives almost genetically among subsequent generations scattered across the world. The intensity of war-related writing from poets like Harrison and Hughes highlights the protracted cultural and geographical afterburn of wartime suffering. The past is constantly invoked to create new "places" constructed of histories, stories, memories - and poems.
Of course, war is still current. Old wars are still with us, fleshing out our contemporary attitudes and sensibilities. There are all the wars-in-progress, which we're busy journalising for future generations to regret. There are new types of global and urban struggle: over water, space, markets, justice - perhaps for consciousness itself. Poetry in the millennial tail-end might well ponder what Heaney terms "the miniscule artistic evidence for the awful volume of reality".
This placement at the Imperial War Museum breaks new ground by creating an official role for a poet at the Museum for the first time in its history. As such, I feel added responsibility to contribute to an alertness to war in all these historical and contemporary aspects - especially amongst the young. Authenticity isn't easy: those of us who haven't experienced war first-hand must navigate smokescreens of glory, nostalgia and voyeuristic horror. There are times to remain silent. What's more, war is rarely completely black or white - a paradox incarnated by the tearful, yet proud, veterans recently shown on TV. Not unambivalent is the tradition of creating a response to war through poetry which reasserts the sacredness of life, a desire for tolerance. War isn't alone in uncovering the ambiguousnesses of literary narrative; but it is in times of war, perhaps, that these are cast in a particular and stringent light.
I'm also aware that to turn to war through poetry is to grapple with voice and form. I'll be seeking to stretch and tear what Louis MacNeice called "the iambic groove which we were all born into" using perturbed folk rhythms, para-rhymed terza rima and near-iambic lines. Such forms of unease and strain might help to reflect the ways people try to keep things going under extreme stress. But the most important thing I take into this residency is the conviction that poetry is uniquely placed to delve into the origin and aftermath of human struggle and social violence. Humanity shuffles into the next millennium still wearing war like a foul suit. If poetics is to accompany rather than abandon us on that journey, it must address all the terrors and opportunities.
Woman
The man is beside you, then he is gone.
Brown leathered hands, not fit for a gun.
See how he goes to the field in the morning,
hear how the sky rumbles to have him.
Taste on your lips the salt of his leaving.
The man was beside you. Now he is gone.
Mario Petrucci is a scientist, freelance writer and Blue Nose poet.
He was awarded this year's London Writers Award and is founder of the experimental poetry group ShadoWork. His first book, Shrapnel and Sheets, was published by Headland and is a PBS Recommendation.
Read some more of Mario's poetry here.