# We have a war poet and didn't know it



## 40below (4 May 2010)

Probably old news to many of you, but Canada's first imbedded war poet(ess) is back from Afgh., and while I don't usually like poetry that doesn't rhyme stuff with 'Nantucket', her stuff is pretty impressive. Her site is www.warpoet.ca and here's an article.

Poet in a war zone
Posted By IAN ELLIOT, QMI AGENCY


When the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry headed to Kandahar last year, it was the first time Canadian soldiers had gone into combat packing a poet.

Among the PPCLI's kit was what the soldiers themselves had dubbed their PL -- Poet Laureate.

B.C. writer Suzanne Steele embedded with the infantry as Canada's first war poet, continuing an 80-year tradition of artists chronicling the country's soldiers at war, although those artists were almost invariably painters or other visual artists.

It was an assignment that raised eyebrows, not least among the infantry soldiers themselves, who bluntly asked: what the hell good is a poet in a war?

The world of Canadian literature asked the very same question. While Steele's resulting work has been praised around the world and is on the curriculum of foreign universities, it has been largely ignored -- or rudely dismissed -- by Canadian writers.

"Oh, the soldiers were suspicious -- I don't think they knew what to make of me at first," said Steele.

She remembers sitting in a jeep one night on exercise in Alberta as an NCO questioned just what she was doing there.

Already picking up the thick skin and profane diction of the soldiers, she fired back a question about what was the most famous war art in Canadian history.

"The sergeant-major started guessing various statues or paintings, and there was a major in the front seat of the G-wagon and I could see his shoulders start to shake from laughing as he listened -- he knew what I was going to say," Steele recalled.

"I told him it's something that every child in Canada knows at least a line of -- In Flander's Fields. Which is a poem."

The diminutive poet, with no military background or connection to the Forces, put her name forward when she realized the country was fighting a war no one was talking about, particularly on the West Coast. She was selected by the military in a Canada-wide competition to chronicle the war.

She took part in the 18 months of pre-deployment training with the infantry and then accompanied them into Afghanistan last year, insisting she be treated just like any other junior soldier, sleeping on the ground and eating meals from a sack. 

http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2561278

Her site is www.warpoet.ca


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## LineJumper (5 May 2010)

40below said:
			
		

> and eating meals from a sack.
> 
> :rofl:


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