In a time of global conflict, we can learn from war poems

Poet and artist Frieda Hughes reflects on her own work after judging war poems this week, written for an annual competition for children run by the charity Never Such Innocence

WAR POEMS

I once tossed a couple of war poems into one of my books

Like hand grenades, because war was happening right then

When “then” was “now”. “They will be out of date and irrelevant”,

The critic wrote, her pen attaching my irrelevance

To that war and her own smile, as if catching those killings

Like netted butterflies, but between words, was futile,

As if war poets were pointless and even a poem about the fall

Of the Berlin Wall would be outdated before it hit the page

Because it could only happen once, and is already over. Her observation

Was distilled in a head that so badly wanted to undo me,

It was as if she disinvented all the wars that festered and boiled

At the edges of humanity for that sole purpose.

But they are the cautionary tales in which we tread

The sharply splintered bones of our ancestors, so we should know better.

As judge I now turn the pages of teenage poems, the poets

Tending the graveside flowers of their own battlefields

In competition for a charity: Never Such Innocence.

They write about new wars, old wars, wars with body part metaphors,

So many wars to choose from. They each describe the means

Of all possible endings, in their efforts to end new beginnings.