New Works Commissioned from Staffordshire’s Poet Laureate

In the centenary year of the Great War, Staffordshire’s Poet Laureate Tom Wyre has been commissioned to pen a series of new works for the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas. Tom says ‘ the arboretum is an inspiration because it’s not just a physically beautiful place it is also very spiritual one. It’s a sad place as well and somewhere where we can dwell on how lucky we are to be here and not to be there – and one of the poems relates to that.’

He will be reading his new works at an evening of poetry and music on Friday July 11 at the Arboretum.

An article about the poet appeared in Burton Mail on June 9th including one of the works –

The Arrival
by Tom Wyre (2014)
A telegram arrives,
Paper coffin hermetically sealed,
Stamped with wings and ferried
through sorrow.
A punched out note that sinks its fangs
into conscience,
A punch into one’s senses from a steel
blue second,
An envelope that wraps up a wife or a
mother’s world.
Three leaden bombshells
masquerading as letters,
Sounds that draw tears, tear out and
tangle heartstrings,
Tied by crushed barbed wire on
Flanders fields.
Syllables that twist the knife and break
the heart,
Cause the smiles to curl down into cries,
Make eyes well and thoughts run
backwards.
With broken clocks, memories cast their
ghosts.
Whispers turn to echoes,
Departing river flows from laughter,
Through happy days;
Such reverie now turned to nightmare.
A deafening cacophony of voices all shout,
Scream from the ether and bang your
skull.
A statement that should never be,
An epitaph for youth who paid the price;
A wasted land where no man breathes.
The ones who packed away their
troubles for good,
Those two pennies laid to rest,
Those three stones of words with
gravest faces.
“Lost In Action”.

Copyright Tom Wyre
Staffordshire’s Poet Laureate.