Meanderings II Author's Introduction (October 2011)

Journal

Volume 2 : November 27, 2021

Meanderings

Author’s Introduction

(October 2011)

For me, Poetry is the medium within which I can express my innermost feelings without the encumbrance or straight-laced prose.

The most exciting moment is that line that comes to mind and, seizing the pen, I just give everything over to a stream of consciousness that takes me to the heart of the subject, whether it be people I am standing amongst, sitting quietly in the coffee shop, walking on Pier Head or enjoying the beautiful compositions and sculptures in an art gallery or exhibition.

It is total freedom; freedom to express myself without restraint and yet to hold back to; to experience through the pen what an artist experiences on canvas – and to recreate the scene and take the reader with me to the very same point, and experience as if they are within that scene that which I see and write and experience.

I admit I have a very individual style, conversational and direct, rather than attention to rhyme and metre; and I like to be lively, sharp and love to push the boundaries, where, for me, being controversial is the norm.

I come from a generation of closed or narrow minds. Thankfully, I live in and amongst a younger generation of broad and open minds. And as one who has experienced life in both camps, I know just how important it is for our society to hold onto this newfound liberalism.

Our generations now face what BBC Radio 4 Today this morning announced to be the Asian Century with new challenges, new types of warfare, but even a hint, ominously, that large nation conflicts are by no means a thing of the 20th Century and never again likely to happen; that such conflicts are possible. Yes. I agree.

I embrace all the cultures but with the warning that what is normal and natural to one culture will be abnormal and abhorrent to another culture, and with other cultures seemingly occupying the middle ground.

I have seen some truly terrifying things in my time; instances that have enabled me to grasp a little understanding of the horrors of Nazism and the uprooting and systematic planned and coordinated destruction of whole groups of people and, in two instances, even two entire peoples, the Jews and the Gypsies.

A few years ago, Yugoslavia to itself apart with Nazi-like ferocity and we watched with horror as the United Nations stood aside and allowed thousands of innocent Muslims to be slaughtered. We are as capable today of evil as we were in the gas ovens of Buchenwald and the railway platforms at Auschwitz and Sobibor, or in the ruins of Berlin as east met west and spared no quarter because neither had they been spared quarter by an invading army whose policy was lebensraum [i] and extermination three years earlier.

Now in my 50s, suddenly all those photographs of middle-aged and elderly people being carted off to hell in the 1930-40s have taken on a new poignancy as I look around me at my own family, parents, grandparents, great grandparents, children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and more. I think to myself, “yes but that was then. It could never happen again.” Until I listen to the rhetoric of some of the strident middle eastern peoples or peoples enslaved to political ideology that even the great Russian peoples have long since rejected and turned their back upon as a failed experiment. And I think, “No. It most surely could happen, and moreover probably will.”

When I was at school I remember seeing this one single quotation which exercised my young mind somewhat, given that we were living in the long shadow of the Second World War; and in that first 20 year postwar period we were naturally convinced that, Cold War apart, such a thing could surely not happen again?

If you wish for peace, you must prepare for war [ii]

We must keep up our guard. We must safeguard all peoples who live within these islands or come to live here. We must live together, independent and free and whilst exercising great caution we must always be that welcome port of call in storm and calm where, in a quintessentially British way, the kettle’s always boiling!

I live in one of the great maritime cities in the world. And as I watched the Crown Princess slip her moorings in the most foul weather today with one or two brave souls chancing the top deck for a ciggie, I considered just how blessed I am, and what a responsibility I carry, as her long shadow moved across the lounge high above the Mersey, and made a dark day even more oppressive. But in here I was warm, and with the binoculars I could see the raging seas over the Fort Perch Lighthouse, my own eternal beacon of light and hope.

Liverpool

2011

[i] living space

[ii] The original Latin of the expression "if you want peace, prepare for war" comes from the book "Epitoma Rei Militaris," by the Roman general Vegetius (whose full name was Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus). The Latin is, "Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.” (Courtesy of www thoughtco dot com)

Kenneth Thomas Webb
Liverpool and Gloucestershire

November 27, 2021
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One of the Fifteen Founding Members of the Leaders Lodge