To hear dad tell it, him and Uncle Ernie

spent the sixties slicing albumen paper

for the creaking matrons of Hartlepool

to present to one another when calling.

Ernie would pick farthings out the noses

or ears of their buttoned-up children,

puddings in sailor suits on the ton-heavy chair,

until the smell of hypo and mag flash

sent him running to the Cambridge halls.

The Great Ernesto.  Roar of the greasepaint.

In the end he had to open a studio,

do a nice line in ladies’ cartes de visite,

though the restless twitch never left.

He once pawned the four-lens Disdéri

for a double-bass, and the lord alone knows

what his poor daughters lived on, says mum,

knowing fine well they’re music teachers.

I’d snap it if I could, this endless blue,

but the Gazette would never take it, blue

not really showing well in half-tone grey.

Open water? Where’s the story? none to see.

What you need’s a squaddie carrying his mate

like a bag of flour on his shoulders,

face clear and bright in the Dardanelles sun,

or a treacherous Serb writhing away

from the blurry hands of his armed guard.

The dramas of this war look good

when they’re shown in black and white,

if I had a thing to shoot I could show you.

I know when to lift the print out the bath,

since nine I’ve been getting the drape right

on the velvet curtain behind that chair,

and now dad’s on about this Autochrome.

He says in the future everything will be in colour.

Footnotes

Ernest Clennett was listed on various censuses as a photographer, magician and musician. Two of his daughters were listed as music teachers.

Disdéri was a French photographer who patented a way of making eight calling cards on one sheet of paper using a camera with four lenses.

Local and national papers sometimes paid for amateur snaps taken by servicemen on the newly-invented portable Kodak camera.

The famous image of heroism in Gallipoli was in fact staged by the photographer Ernest Brooks.

One of the first live-action reportage photographs ever taken was of the arrest of Gavrilo Princip, the Black Hand member who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Autochrome was a colour photography process first marketed by the Lumiere brothers in 1907. I have imagined it getting to Hartlepool a little later than Paris!

Arthur Clennett Junior died aged 17, before he could take over the family photography business.

This is one of a series of 'Munitionette' poems written by Kirsten Luckins for the 'Heroism & Heartbreak' Project:

Steady now, Gracie

 easy with the bogie

control it

 those precise hands

 tendons raised and fanned

 remember our mam

when she still silver-served

 six plates up each ballerina arm

 glide like a swan

 that’s how it’s done

 Perch there, Gracie

 canary on a high stool

in this giant’s great hall!

lay your eggs, Gracie

lay your long brass eggs

 sleeping in their cradle

 pack them, firm but gentle

Gracie, Gracie,

take care

 like you’re tucking in a much-loved

 trouble-

maker

This is one of a series of 'Munitionette' poems written by Kirsten Luckins for the 'Heroism & Heartbreak' Project:

Grace is a thing of muscle,

gluteus, soleus, glorious

collusion of sinew – grace

is a ball passed girl to girl,

pool to pool down a cascade,

private joke, secret shared.

Have you ever played? She has

begun to live for this, a path

to the goal like a break in clouds,

defenders as much use as mist,

every beat of her heart a direct hit,

feet alert as searchlights,

when she strikes, it’s the kiss

of a drillbit on an eight inch casing,

crowd screaming louder than lathes –

but its not for this that she plays

Hoods Haggies or the slips from Vickers,

or takes the fight to Wallsend Slipway;

it’s not for dutiful funds raised,

minesweepers’ orphans mean nothing

when the leather thuds – afterwards

they can count the shillings out

for the Sailors’ Flower Day or

Welcome Home for the lucky men

for whom she will retire. But now

                                                               Grace is a thing of muscle,       

gluteus, soleus, glorious

explosion, Grace is a thing of fire.

This poem is a collective work, edited by Kirsten Luckins, from the work of the pupils of Class 10, Barnard Grove Primary School, Hartlepool, at a Workshop held on board the paddle steamship Wingfield Castle, as part of the 'Heorism & Heartbrerak' Project:

Paddles, heavy as a million rocks,  

Heavy as ten thousand mountains,

Pushed her through the sea.

In the engine room,

Dirty as mud in a flooded field,

The sailors’ skin and clothes turned grubby as mud.

How old is the engine room?

As old as the Titanic, as old as the Stone Age?

It is as dusty as a path that has lain one hundred years.

The engine inside is dangerous,

As vicious as an active volcano,

Eating up coal as black as your worst nightmare.

From the furnace a light shines through the boiler room,

As bright as the searching sun on a stunning sunny day.

Outside, the lifeboat ring as rough as a splintered branch,

The deck as dusty as an abandoned mantelpiece –

But in the sun, everything is bright as a multi-coloured rainbow.

Smoke once billowed out of the chimney,

Tall as Big Ben striking midnight,

Standing proudly, viewing its admirers,

Taller, tall as a giant, taller than a skyscraper!

Inside, the old saloon is a café now,

Quiet as the countryside on a summer Sunday,

Posh as a delicate teapot,

Shiny as a silver house, polished,

Glistening like the sea covered in glitter, reflecting the sun.

It is a beautiful as a rose with no rust.

Nothing there is cold, except the old brass bell,

That is as cold as ice on a winter morning,

And as loud as a thousand screams.

Mrs. R. Stephenson: Class 10
Ellie Burgon, Adam Deer, Ellen McDonough, Amy Salvin, Evie Taylor, Jay Weatherill, Sophie Healey, Demi Fielding, Reece Delaney, Ben Robinson, Teighan Stuart, Jack Teal, Jessica Donnelly, Amy Ferguson, Toby Deer, Jay Salmons, Adam Mincher, Annabelle Kaid, Erin Roberts, Megan Blades, Ellie Mason, Paige Holland, Brodie Purcifer.

“Elsewhere, hardly another generation will see the shell-holes mortared up, the trenches smoothed out, the streets laughing with the good cheer of honest labour”. From ‘Under German Fire’,

When it’s all over, things will be

in rightful places. In the sidings

the strewn shreds, light as tobacco flakes

will re-wind into waggonloads of rope.

At The Willows, the wrought iron gates

will re-fuse their ornate tracery behind

the six-foot sleeper as it retracts

its oaken bulk back across Hartlepool Road.

As far away as Trimdon or Pudding Poke,

the soft fields will relinquish ordinance

they had tucked intact in their cleavage,

so it may be ruled ‘Property of the Kaiser’,

waggishly offered for collection in person.

The Baptist organ will fall dormant,

that one beautiful shell-struck chord

will re-coil into the smashed façade,

bricks darning the aperture.

Melodies will lie docile in the throats of pipes

waiting for instructions, like women

who have returned from factories to sit

beside the lit home fires, watching

for the demobbed in their former clothes.

Sons will be home by Christmas, fathers

sit once more in the carver, limbs

will re-attach to Belgian trees, barbaric Huns

will remain inside re-drawn lines,

medals will pinpoint all the right chests.

The black crude of Persia will flow

into our coffers, all coffins eventually

will be re-ordered into respectful avenues.

Trestle tables will take to our streets,

vindication will sweeten our cups of tea.

Kirsten writes: "This piece was originally written as part of the Heugh Battery project in 2014, to commemorate the centenary of the WW1 bombardment. It was not published in the resulting anthology To Cross the Wine Dark Sea, so I am delighted to find it a home here. It's form is inspired by Homers Iliad, which is an epic poem describing the attack on Troy from the sea – the parallels with the bombardment are clear. I use a hexametric (or six-beat) line, which is loosely Homeric, and also use long 'epic similes'. The story is told from the point of view of the German stokers, and I had intended it to show how much the men on both sides had in common, which to me makes the whole idea of the war so much more tragic."

Stokers

Glory! they boasted, and Duty! and privately whispered Adventure!

Young men, fired up, fire-hardened, from foundries, from forges, from pitshafts

That coffined them daily in darkness to hack at the black band that fed

The dirty great heart of the nation.

                                                            Below, there was no way of knowing

The state of the sky, or the river that ran overhead, never pausing,

Bristling with staithes where it stretched out, bunching with factories panting

At the nape of each bend. The works bell pinched off hours of daylight,

And the seam of the river span onwards, a black thread knotted with barges,

Tugboats, indomitable steamers. Industry slept like an ogre,

Restlessly, dreaming of conquest, and grinding its teeth until morning.

Young men, what did they dream of?

                                                The sunny lark of France, and meadows,

Or the brave dream of sea and clean water, clean sky, clear horizon

And the enemy sighted like mallards seen through the scope of a rifle,

A table-top stall at a fairground, a coconut shy of destroyers,

Winning as easy as narrowing one eye, their girl smiling at them.

But some were sent to be stokers. Not for them starch and brass buttons.

Suited for boiler-room labour, they marched single-file through the airlocks

To bend at the waist, as a tree bends in hot winds that blow from a bomb-blast,

To twist from the waist in the pressure, the breath of the greedy furnace.

The coal-faced shovellers fed it, plying the arc from the coal pile,

Twist and lift, twist and lift, sweating in black stripes, skulling for swiftness,

Pulling their ships through water denied to them, blinded by bulkheads.

By their efforts, the convoy came slinking at daybreak, wearing a fog-hide,

Flat on their bellies like stalkers in long grass, creeping on warrens.

Above decks, eager, the gunners eyed up the range and the measure,

Triggered a straddling salvo, straightened and flew to the re-load,

Until shells fell to ground like a hard rain, like a hailstorm out of a clear sky

On a marketplace, that forces shoppers and mongers to rush under awnings,

Inadequate, buckling canvas that tears with the force of the downpour.

Hove to for attack, the stokers hung shovels a heartbeat and listened.

The muffled percussion of foot-clanks, invisible beasts in the stairwells,

And deep in the steel a faint booming. Like thunder claps, heard by a sleeper

Through bed-springs that wake him and set him to counting the beats between flashes,

The stokers sent out all their senses to follow the flow of the battle

And will on the storm to blow over without striking them.  Just one torpedo,

Ripping a hole in the right place will scald off their skin in the instant

Brine meets the heat and the pressure in which they are sealed, double-buffered

Silently waiting for orders.  

                                                            A trembling under their boot soles,

A groan in the bones, an avalanche of rivet-strain spilled through the steel hull,

The floor flung them, bounced them, ball bearings slithering over a drumskin,

And they knew they were hit. Almost running ahead of their orders

They bent to the mouth of the furnace, speeding the arc from the coal pile,

Built up a steam-head and, aching, hauled the ship eastwards to safety,

Its afterdeck severed and headless, burning and bloated with bodies.

Kaiser! they said, and Kultur! But bravado once bitten’s a bad coin.

They pinned silver on them, and patched them, and sent them again after six weeks

To defeat.

                        The deck listed slowly enough for the men, in formation,

To chorus their national anthem, then walk to the water and enter

The courteous ships of their enemies.  All hands, all but the stokers,

Locked in the hotbox and sinking, dumb muscles, forfeit and finished.

Kirsten writes: "The lighthouse keeper of the title is Robert George Wallace, who worked on the bucket dredger Robert De Brus until an accident severed his leg. He was retained on the payroll of Trinity House as keeper of the Moor lighthouse. In 1912, he enlisted his ten-year old son as an apprentice in the Merchant Navy. The boy served throughout WW1, going down in family folklore for his arrest in France at the age of sixteen for attempting to use dud coins at a brothel."

The Lighthouse Keeper

On heavy days, my lost foot

itches, the one the dredger took.

That paternoster scrape-and-dump

stops for no man’s leg. The stump’s

healed shiny, my trouser’s pinned in half,

the empty air needles when I tap the glass.

Mostly, if I seem fogged in thought

I’m picturing the Boy sailing into port,

squinting into the white noon glare

or else glowing a sundown peach, somewhere

with Tees-built ships, but foreign weather.

Barcelona, perhaps, or Valetta.

Bright at ten, but a handful,

I knew the Navy for a funnel

to pour my raw Boy towards better

chances, sense knocked in, learn him his letters

by eleven. In time, he’d cipher more

than that, reading flags and stars,

clouds and charts, things that seem arcane

to lubbers; the tidal wax and wane,

how the arriving future is seen

in a scumble to starboard, or smelled on a breeze.

Political storms are harder to sense.

He’d be a man in the company of men.

At sixteen, after four years of war

he was caught trying to diddle a whore

in Marseilles with a clutch of fake tokens.

Lucky not to have his nose broken,

he told it as a joke, how she flung him to les flics,

his pidgin frog deserting, her patois algérique

a gush of gutter water, hilarious fury.

Down the Pot House, that was the story

he spun, missed out how he’d laughed

at U-boats, but wept for fear behind bars.

Like his mouth never says what he thinks of me,

tethered to my lantern, the fleet running free.

fathoms under the storm-side

            under the blind lanterns of the mines

                        unlucky steamer, I lie

                                                snuffed

                        cracked, blown bulb on a littered dance-floor

Atlantic drift, draw

            the darkness over me

                        build me a scour,

                                    a long-fingered shadow of sand

                                                in my broken lea

                        sediment imprint

            for future rocks a million

million wars from

now, invisible my ions glide

            brine divides

                        rivets scab

                                    even the noblest metals die                                                                           brittle stars

            small enough to

soft, in my heart

            my saloon gives up

                        the gleam of polish

                                                                        Who have you lost?

sister ships whisper down

            secret channels, from Friendly Isles

                        to Cape Wrath

                                                                        How many have you lost?

the Georges, the Edwards,

            Christians, Riches, Wills…

Sisters, I am here with all hands

            slipped from their skins like evening gloves

                        they burst to join the sea

two hundred and eighty one skulls bowling lightly

            fives hundred and sixty two femurs shuffling

                        constellate, phalanges dot-dash

                                    as far as crabs can drag

                                                all , oh all my hands

what will happen now

            to the cargo we held?

                        can bagged wheat be sown underwave?

                                                will it grow into a sunken field

                        nodding ears silverly

            as the bells on drowned churches

that chime in folk tales?

                                                                        And who is left to reap?

This poem was put together by Kirsten Luckins from collective "eyeball kicks" at a workshop for the Hartlepool Adult Writing Group, held on board the paddle steamship Wingfield Castle, as part of the 'Heroism & Heartbreak' Project:

Twenty-One Gun Salute

Death is a bitter nightfall

          a motionless chapel

                   an ineffective drum

Death is a heavy root

          a steady stalk

                   an abnormal harvest

Death is a backless park

          a silent encounter

                   a recognised daughter

Death is a scolding anchor

          a preparatory assault

                    intermittent vulnerability

Death is an interesting premise

          an outrageous meditation

                   an extensive legend

Death is a white embryo

          unsullied meat

                   an absolute angel

                   a mirror of the universe

          a foolish commander

Death is perfect for man

Kirsten writes: "Unspeakable" was inspired by a conversation I had with the niece of Alexander Sharp, a merchant seaman who died on 13th April 1918 on board the Dreel Castle, a drifter that was torpedoed off the Scilly Isles whilst maintaining submarine nets across harbours. Alex was only nineteen at the time, the middle child of ten. The niece that I spoke to was the daughter of Alex's very youngest sister, the tenth child, who was only two at the time of his loss. Reportedly, their mother never got over it. 

Unspeakable

Something happened to words.

Just as you were ready to grasp them,

they grew spines.

Watch your mother

fold your baby clothes, hand-me-down

ten times, ten fingers, ten toes

            this little piggy

See her face stop.

Crumple

before she gets

            all the way home

Hear your mother

not saying certain words

            a boy’s name

            a faraway port

            the number nineteen

            harbour                      is no longer safe.

            nets                             fill with dread like body parts.

See the drowned weight tug her mouth

out of true.

Watch your mother swallow words

that detonate inside her anyway.

Watch her navigate conversations

as if they were coastlines

fraught with mines.