A Wartime Poetry Journal by Effie M. Roberts

Effie M. Roberts wrote her journal of poetry in World War 2. Times were very bleak but she rarely lost her sense of humour, or her courage.

My thoughts: This is a really lovely book. It has been edited and published by the author's granddaughter, and this means she has been able to give a really good introduction to the book telling the reader about the background of her grandmother's life. I found this really helpful beacuse it gives you a context for the poems.

The poems themselves are really lovely. Effie wrote them as her journal during the war years, so they are quite personal. She writes about everything from waiting in a queue, to finding out that her husband was killed. The poems made me feel a range of emotions; some made me smile, others had me nearly crying.

My favourite poem in the book was this one:

After so many months of war,
And the ruins around, we see,
We think - must everything be lost?
And what will the end ever be?

War has left thousands homeless,
And robbed us of many a thing;
Though havoc is left near and far,
It can't take away everything.

We must have the cheerless black-out,
We must have the great guns booming,
But the birds still carol gaily,
And the flowers still keep on blooming.

We still have the leafy woodland,
There is joy in the sunlit hill,
In the breezes, softly sighing,
And the river that's never still.

There is joy in the starlit sky,
And the health-giving sun's warm ray,
We find, when we just think awhile,
There's lots the war can't take away.