To the War Poets

In “To the War Poets” John Greening sends dispatches across the decades. In a sequence of verse letters, he addresses the poets of the First World War directly, making connections yet always aware of distance: 'No larks, / just the passing of traffic.' Greening 'explores Englishness', but also, in his translations from German poets, goes beyond it. From the discovery of the Sutton Hoo burial in 1939 to the security forces' shutdown of Heathrow airport in 2006, the presence or threat of conflict underlies Greening's precise, unsentimental writing.