Publisher's Synopsis
The powerful, tight prose passages interspersed with spare, elegant poems not only communicate the visceral details of a specific time and place, but also open up questions of how memory works, its gaps and its intensity, above all how it's scars resonate through a life. A highly accomplished and compelling pamphlet from an experienced poet.
"War Baby uses the form of the sequence to create an impressive internal coherence that powerfully evokes a childhood experience of London during and after the Second World War. This is the poetry of memory but vividly specific and completely unsentimental." Ian Gregson
Extract from: 'First House (4)'
When I had to pass the redbrick hospital with its iron grilles on the windows level with the street, I would hold my breath for fear of germs or cross to the other side. I never saw anyone go in or come out, never expected to.
My brother was born in a hospital, my baby sister died in one. I was given a nurse doll and my father made a toy hospital bed - he was good at toys. Later I would lie in a real hospital bed, having things done to me like a doll patient.
(ii)
The taste of air was grit, I remember,
the whole of London sheeted in dust
which toned down colour,
scoured lungs like the pumice
that rubbed my skin red-sore when my dip-pen
splattered my awkward hand.
I can't remember vases full of spring
only the sickly not-quite-rotten scent
of green-white privet flowers.
The holy water stoup smelled of vinegar
and dead sponge, the chapel of old incense.
The nuns smelled of habits worn too long.
