This week in our round up of poetry news we look at a discovery of letters written by Rudyard Kipling and the performance of an obscenity filled poem in a cemetery.
WWI Letters from Rudyard Kipling Reveal Search for Son
A discovery of letters that date from 1915 shows that the poet and author Rudyard Kipling made an appeal for information regarding the whereabouts of his son, who went missing during World War One on the Western Front.
Kipling is best known for his stories and poems which were set in India during British Imperial rule. In recent years, there has been some controversy around much of his work with concerns that it is “racist” in nature.
A quote from one of the letters, which have been put up for auction, reads:
Kipling died in 1936 never having discovered what had happed to his son. In 1992 a body that is believed to have been his missing son was found in Loos, located in France in an unmarked grave. 2nd Lieutenant Jack Kipling is known to have entered the battle on the 3rd day of the Battle of Loos. He was declared missing shortly after.
Kipling began writing letters to the City of London Military Hospital shortly after. It is two of these letters that have recently been discovered. In the 1950s, the letters were acquired by a collector in London. They were passed down to his daughter and her son has now decided to put them up for auction.
The letters are described as offer a deeply personal insight into the torment that Kipling felt at the time. As a result of poor eyesight Jack Kipling wasn’t eligible for military service. However, the poet and his wife felt participation in the war was essential in order to prevent a victory for German so assisted in gaining their son a commission.
Whilst Kipling never actually directly wrote about the loss of his son it is beloved this was the inspiration for the poem “My Boy Jack” which is about a sailor asking for news about his son.
Poem Performed in Cemetery it was Inspired by
Once described as a “torrent of four-letter filth” the poem V which was written by the late Tony Harrison, has been performed at Holbeck Cemetery in Leeds which inspired its creation.
The event took place to mark the 40th anniversary of the publication of V, and 5 actors took part in the event which was held for a full day with multiple readings.
V was inspired by the racist graffiti and vandalism that Harrison found on the graves when visiting the memorials to his parents. In 1987, a couple of years after the poem was written, Mary Whitehouse, an anti-obscenity campaigner, learned that there were plans to broadcast a film of the poet reading the poem in its entirety. The poem was broadcast on 4th November 1987 and contained the longest sequence of sexually explicit words in the history of British television.
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