Edward L. Davison (1898 - 1970) – Scottish-born poet who later moved to the United States of America

With thanks to Dr Connie Ruzich* for discovering this poet for us

Edward Lewis Davison was born in Fife, Soctland in 1898 and grew up in Newcastle. He left school when he was 12 to support his mother by working as an assistant in a music hall.  In 1914, Edward joined the Royal Navy with the rank of Sub Lieutenant, serving as a Paymaster.   

After the war, Edward went to study Modern Languages at St John's College, Cambridge University on a scholarship.  When at Cambridge Edward edited an anthology of student poetry and met and became friends with the writer J. B. Priestley, with whom he shared accommodation when he moved to live in London. 

While living in London, Edward contributed to The London Mercury and other magazines. He met an American girl, Nat alie Weiner, and followed her to the United States in 1925. Natalie and Edward were married in New York in 1926. Their son Peter Davison was born in June 1928.   Peter also became a poet. 

Edward taught at Vassar College, the University of Miami, and the University of Colorado Boulder, where he was involved in the Colorado Writers 1937 Conference. He was a friend of American poet Robert Frost 

In 1943, during the Second World War, shortly after becoming a Naturalized Citizen of the United States, Edward joined the US Army.  He attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Due to his knowledge of the German language, he was named Director of the Special Projects Division, which was responsible for overseeing the re-education of German prisoners of war.

Edward died on 8th February 1970.

According to Catherine Reilly, Edward’s poetry collections were 

“Poems” (Bell,1920)

“Harvest of Youth: poems” (Harper, New York, 1926)

“The Heart’s Unreason” (Gollancz, 1931.

And he also had a poem published in “Soldiers’ verse” Edited by Patric Dickinson (Muller, 1945)

Sources:   Find my Past, Wilipedia,

Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978). Pp. 106 and 7.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/02/09/archives/edward-davison-poet-and-teacher-exdean-at-hunter-prolific-writer-is.html

* You can read Edward's WW1 poem for Conscientious Objectors on Dr Connie Ruzich's wonderful Website Behind their Lines here:: https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2018/07/singing-in-shattered-street.html

James Griffyth Fairfax (1886 -1976) - Australian-born British poet, translator and politician

With grateful thanks to Dr. Connie Ruzich* for reminding

me that I had not yet written a post for this poet

James was born in Sydney, Australia, on 15th July 1886. His parents were Charles Burton Fairfax (1863-1941) and his wife, Florence Marie Fairfax, née Frazer. His great-grandfather, John Fairfax (1804-1877), was a printer, bookseller,and newspaper publisher who emigrated to Australia from Warwickshire, UK in 1838.

Educated in Britain, James attended Winchester College in Hampshire as a boarder, before going on to study at New College, Oxford University. He had poems published in "Isis", "The Idler", and "Pall Mall Magazine"

At the outbreak of the First World War, James joined the army, serving as a Captain in the British Royal Army Service Corps, attached to the 15th Indian Division from 1914-1919. He published two volumes of war poems – “The Temple of Janus” in 1917 and “Mesopotamia” in 1919.

An extract from “The Forest of the Dead 1919” by James Griffyth Fairfax

There are strange trees in that pale field

Of barren soil and bitter yield:

They stand without the city walls;

Their nakedness is unconcealed.

Cross after cross, mound after mound,

And no flowers blossom but are bound

The dying and the dead, in the wreaths

Sad crowns for kings of Underground.

You can read the rest of the poem on the All Poetry website

https://allpoetry.com/James-Griffyth-Fairfax

* Read two more poems by James on Dr. Connie Ruzich’s wonderful website Behind their Lines :

https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2018/07/memories-of-mesopotamia.html

More information here on Discover War Poets Website:

https://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar1/poets-and-poetry/james-griffyth-fairfax/

And this is an extremely interesting article with a great deal of information:

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/366746/pdf

Additional sources: Find  my Past and 

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/366746/pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfax_family

https://allpoetry.com/James-Griffyth-Fairfax

https://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar1/poets-and-poetry/james-griffyth-fairfax/

Photograph of James by Mary Laffan and copyright National Library of Australia. 

André Breton (1896 – 1966) - French writer and poet

André Robert Breton was born on 19th February 1896 in Tinchebray, France.   He was the only son born to Louis-Justin Breton, a policeman, and his wife, Marguerite-Marie-Eugénie, nee Le Gouguès, who was a former seamstress.

André studied medicine and was particularly interest in mental illness. His studies were interrupted when he was conscripted into the French Army in the First World War.  André worked in a neurological ward in a hospital in Nantes, France, where he met the Alfred Jarry devotee Jacques Vaché, whose anti-social attitude and disdain for established artistic tradition influenced André considerably. Vaché committed suicide when he was 23, and his war-time letters to Breton and others were published in a volume entitled ‘Lettres de guerre’ (Tr. Letters of War) (1919), for which André Breton wrote four introductory essays.

André's first collection of poems - written before and during the First World War – was published in 1919 with the title “Monte de Piété” (Tr. 'Pawnbroker').  Here is a poem from that collection:

During the post-war years André expanded on his work as a writer and was a pioneer of Dadaism and surrealism, both of which flourished in the disillusioned post-war years.

André died in Paris on 28 September 1966.

You can find out more about André Breton's poems by borrowing this book on line free from Archive

https://archive.org/details/poemsofandrbre00bretrich/page/n7/mode/2up

Benjamin Péret (1899 – 1959) - French poet

 

With thanks to Dr Connie Ruxich for reminding me I had not yet posted about Benjamin Péret on my weblog 

Benjamin Péret was born in Rezé, France on 4thJuly 1899.  He didn’t like going to school and instead attended the Local Art School in 1912. In 1913, he resigned due to his lack of study.  Benjamin then spent a short period of time in a School of Industrial Design.

When the First World War began, Benjamin enlisted in the French army's Cuirassiers, to avoid being sent to prison for defacing a local statue with paint. He saw action in the Balkans, before being deployed to Salonica, Greece.

During a routine movement of his unit by train, Benjamin discovered a copy of Pierre Albert-Birot's avant-garde magazine “SIC: Sons Idées Couleurs, Formes”, which was founded in January 1916, lying on a bench on the station platform. It contained poetry by Apollinaire and sparked Péret's love for experimental poetry. SIC was the second Parisian magazine, after “Nord-Sud”, to distribute the texts of the Zurich Dadaists, namely those of Tristan Tzara.   By the end of its publication in December 1919, SIC had published 53 issues.

Towards the end of the war, while still in Greece, Benjamin suffered from an attack of dysentery, which led to his repatriation and deployment in Lorraine in FRance for the remainder of the war. 

After the war, Benjamin joined the Dada movement and in 1921 he published “Le Passager du transtlantique” – his first book of poetry before he abandoned the Dada movement to follow André Breton and the emerging Surrealist movement, working alongside and influencing the Mexican writer Octavio Paz.

Read Benjamin Péret’s poem “Petit Chanson des Mutilés” (Tr. Little Song of the Maimed) on Dr Connie Ruzich’s wonderful website Behind their Lines : :https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2016/02/song-of-verdun.html

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis, known as C. J. Dennis, (1876 – 1938) - Australian poet and writer

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis, known as C. J. Dennis, was born in Auburn, South Australia on 7th September 1876.. His father owned hotels in Auburn, and later in Gladstone and Laura. His mother suffered ill health, so Clarrie (as he was known) was raised initially by his great-aunts, before attending the Christian Brothers College, Adelaide as boarder when he was a teenager.

At the age of 19 Clarence was employed as a solicitor's clerk. It was while he was working in that job, like banker's clerk Banjo Paterson before him, his first poem was published under the pen name "The Best of the Six". He went on to publish in “The Worker”, under his own name and as "Den", and in “The Bulletin”. 

He joined the literary staff of “The Critic” in 1897 and, after a spell doing odd jobs around Broken Hill, returned to The Critic, serving for a time c. 1904 as Editor, to be succeeded by Conrad Eitel. In 1906 Clarence founded “The Gadfly” as a literary magazine; it ceased publication in 1909. From 1922 he served as staff poet on the “Melbourne Herald”. Clarence’s first book of verse, “Backblock ballads and other verses”, was published in 1913.

C.J. Dennis was most lauded during the First World War, when his works were read in the trenches as keenly as they were at home.  You can read one of his WW1 poems here: https://allpoetry.com/poem/8486843-War-by-C-J-Dennis

C.J. Dennis married Margaret Herron in 1917. Margaret published two novels and a biography of her husband entitled “Down the Years”.

C.J. Dennis died on 22nd June 1938 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.  He was buried in Box Hill Cemetery, Melbourne. The Box Hill Historical Society attached a commemorative plaque to the gravestone. C.J. Dennis is also commemorated with a plaque on Circular Quay in Sydney which forms part of the NSW Ministry for the Arts – Writers Walk series, and by a bust outside the town hall of the town of Laura.

“ ‘Vale’John Monash” by C.J. Dennis 

So ends a life, lived to the full alway,

  Thro' peace, thro' war, thro' honored peace again,

From youth unto the closing of his day

  Lived simply.  Yet a giant among men

Today steals quietly to seek his rest

  As quietly he lived, yet none his peer.

In service of his land he gave his best

  And, in simplicity, found greatness here.

Seeking no honour but his country's thanks,

  No man among us won a place more high.

Comrade and leader where the myriad ranks

  Stand now with bended heads as John goes by.

Ever a man, a soldier and a friend

  In every heart some echo of the knell

That marks his passing throbs for this great end,

  Saying in requiem, "Pass, John, all is well."

Written by C.J. Dennis in honour of General Sir John Monash GCMG, KCB, VD (27 June 1865 – 8 October 1931), who was also a poet (and an artist).

C.J. Dennis is mentioned in Catherine W. Reilly’s “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978) on page 395 – as an Australian poet