By Sarah Montin
Jenny Lewis’ captivating collection of war poems, published in 2014, on the centenary of the First World War, appears even more relevant today as Europe finds itself once more engaged in armed conflict.
“My father died when I was few months old and I have been searching for him ever since announces the poet in her preface (Lewis 2014a, 11), presenting her collection as a voyage into her father’s military service in the First World War, initiated by her timely discovery of “a dusty old suitcase” full of “faded papers and memorabilia” in her basement at Oxford (Lewis 2014b). Fruit of extensive research at the National Archives and the Imperial War Museum – six years looking into her father’s service as a Second Lieutenant in the 4th Battalion of the South Wales Borderers – and supplemented by interviews of contemporary soldiers and war victims, Taking Mesopotamia offers a persuasive reflexion on the experience of war from the perspective of combatants and civilians alike. Fostering parallels between the British Mesopotamian Campaign of the Great War (1914-1918), the war in Iraq (2003-2011), and the 4000-year-old Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, Jenny Lewis offers a multi-layered reflection on the timeless themes of war and man’s hubris, alluded to in the book’s epigraph: “As for humans, their days are numbered/Whatever they do is like a puff of wind” (Gilgamesh, Tablet III)…
Close Encounters in War 