This week I’m so pleased to welcome back Phil Vernon to talk about his poem, The Command, from his latest collection, Guerrilla Country (Flight of the Dragonfly Press, 2024).
Guerrilla Country, my new collection published by Flight of the Dragonfly Press, explores the interaction between peace, conflict and place, with reference to specific locations and events. One of the locations I wanted to explore was the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, site of the massacre of peaceful protestors and bystanders on 13th April, 1919. I’d visited the site many years ago and, like anyone who’s been there, it affected me profoundly not only as the site of violence and suffering on that day, but also as an example of the unjust colonial governance of India more broadly. (The demonstrators were protesting legislation designed to further limit their political rights, as well as associated acts of government repression.)
I often don’t know much a priori about what poem may emerge from an initial spark or idea. The more I considered Jallianwala Bagh, the more I began to wonder about the moment a decision is taken, and communicated, to unleash overwhelming state violence on peaceful demonstrators. In this case, the poem focused on the order given by General Dyer sometime in the early evening, to block the exits and open fire. How and why did he give the order? How was his order translated into the actions of his men?
Early on in the process of composition I remembered the phrase ‘an order is heavier than a stone’ – part of the explanation given by a participant in the 1994 Rwanda genocide for why he had taken part. I’ve always found it a very powerful and chilling image, with powerful implications for how human society is organised. The phrase didn’t find its way into the poem itself, but I included it as an epigraph to help frame the poem. Once the order – heavier than a stone – is given, is it therefore subject to and given force by gravity?
As the poem developed, I thought of other, similar situations such as Tiananmen Square (1989) and St Peter’s Square in Manchester (1819), where demonstrators had likewise been attacked and killed when demonstrating peacefully for their rights. So these are referenced too, albeit obliquely, in the first and second sections of the poem. The baton rounds and tear gas recall events in Northern Ireland. And I also had in mind the prolonged stand-off between the Indian Army and Sikh separatists that culminated in a fierce battle at the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1984.
I knew, early on, that I wanted to include an image of the perfectly peaceful inner sanctum of the Golden Temple, as a contrast to the violence outside. This is section three of the poem.
Many poets have said that writing a poem is an opportunity to ‘work something out’, which is why we often end up in a place where we hadn’t expected to be, by the end of a poem. That was certainly the case here. One insight that emerged was the thought that – I don’t know if this is strictly true – it is probably easier to order an attack on unarmed people if the person who does so can ‘other’ their likely victims. In addition, The command ends with the thought that regimes often resort to violence (‘displays of strength’) when they feel vulnerable or insecure, at least in their bones; and that we all – surely? – have a role to play in prevention, however challenging that may be, and should look to ourselves as well as others when seeking accountability for such acts.
Next week read my review of this hard-hitting and thought-provoking new collection by Phil Vernon.
Nigel Kent - Poet and Reviewer 