7th July, 2017

Friday Poem – ‘To a Comrade in Arms’, Alun Lewis

Our Friday Poem this week is ‘To a Comrade in Arms’, by our featured Legendary Author of the month, Alun Lewis.

‘To a Comrade in Arms’ was originally published in Lewis’ first collection Raiders’ Dawn, which appeared during his period of service in Burma during World War Two. Raiders’ Dawn featured fourty-seven poems, and effectively answered the critics’ questions about the absence of war poets in that conflict. Alun Lewis is often seen as a poetic mouthpiece for the reality of the Second World War, his poetry faithfully communicating the mundane and sombre details he experienced.
In 2015, to celebrate the centenary of Lewis’ birth, we published Alun Lewis: Collected Poems, which contains this and other poems from Raiders’ Dawn, plus a selection from Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets (1945), and uncollected poems. A body of work which has endured and which transcends the label ‘war poetry’, Collected Poems is complete in itself, and full of promise of greater things.

Alun Lewis: Collected Poems is available from the Seren website: £9.99

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