Reviewed by Sarah Claudette
“Have no fear. The world is always ending” -Burden (pg 59)
A review of Burden (2020), a collection of raw poetry that follows the tragic intersection of the lives of two young soldiers on the front lines in Belgium 1915.
Burden. The title itself bears the weight of acclaimed poet Douglas Burnet Smith’s title character, while reflecting an unapologetic testament to the terrors of trench warfare and its devastating effects on the human psyche.
The poems were inspired by a collection of found letters from Smith’s uncle Lance Corporal Reginald Smith. Through these torn-up, redacted, fading notes emerges a story that is not unique. It’s a tale that played out hundreds of times. It’s not a story of the Great War or the Greatness of War. Smith gives the reader an unforgiving account of men acting beyond their emotional and psychological capacity. He lays out on the page, experiences that leave hideous invisible scars that are results of an unending barrage of mental shrapnel. Smith’s rapid verse conveys the time-bending, perception-altering monster that makes its home in the minds of too many returning veterans.
The juxtaposition between LC Smith, who himself was only twenty, and title character seventeen-year-old Private Harold Burden, still a youth (daresay a child) in their respective attempts to temporarily stave off piercing trauma, positions LC Smith firmly as an anti-hero. Less an indictment of war than of its human cost, the author leads the reader through a maze of shattered and shattering minds, dead stares, open wounds and short-term recoveries. Souls are lost, but the body remains: if it is capable of continuing to kill for God and country, such is the demand but upon it. As internalized wounds fester, the soldier cannot make his body stay with his company. Escape is at hand, but it comes to the story’s broken protagonist in the form of an execution squad. The devastation does not end in the departure of a bullet from a rifle — and into the chest of a youth. Rather, it begins anew as the horror reverberates back from the barrel into the heart of the child-killer. The good soldier carries on.
It is notable that Burden is never portrayed as the youth that he was. No laughter, no playing cards, no letters from sweethearts back home. Burden becomes, to the reader, locked forever in his suffering and death. Indeed, death bleeds from the book’s pages in its omnipresence.
Reading Burden is a physical experience. Smith successfully takes hold of the reader’s nervous system, as he leads them through his short book, offering no protection from the flood of emotions it delivers. Burden is the immersive experience that undresses war to expose the darkest costs of human combat. Lest we forget.
Burden is available for pre-order now at www.douglasburnetsmith.com.
Private Herald Burden (British Expeditionary Forces) Died 21 July 1915 aged 17 Native of England, Lewisham, London. Burial site unknown
Lance Corporal Reginald Smith (23rd Battalion, London Regiment) Died October 19, 1915 aged 20 Native of England. Son of George and Alice Smith,of St. James, Winnipeg. Bethune Town Cemetary, Pas de Calais, France
Contemporary photograph of Private Burden Unknown, probably British Army c. 1914–1915.
http://bellewaarde1915.co.uk/men/private%20herbert%20burden.htm
Private Herbert Burden, 2nd Northumberland Fusiliers, British Army, shot for desertion 21 July 1915, near Ypres
"Shot at Dawn" memorial by Andy de Comyn, based on Herbert Burden NMAguide - Own work Shot at Dawn memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum
Public Domain:Bellewaarde Ridge a few months after the battle and Burden's execution. Unknown Australian Official Photographer
https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/E01238/
View of the devastated Chateau Wood and Bellewaarde Lake, in the Ypres Salient in Belgium.
