The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize 2007

Neetha Kunaratnam


Neetha Kunaratnam has won this year’s Geoffrey Dearmer Prize: awarded to an emerging poet, who has not yet published a full collection, for work appearing in Poetry Review. This year’s prize was judged by the distinguished poet and critic Alan Brownjohn, whose citation we  publish below. The Geoffrey Dearmer Prize is awarded, through the generosity of the Dearmer family, to honour the noted World War One poet and Society member. Poetry Review is extremely grateful to the Dearmer family and to Alan Brownjohn.

Neetha Kunaratnam’s winning poem appeared in PR 97:2, Ars poetica. He was born and grew up in London, of Tamil Sri Lankan parents, but has lived in both Japan and France – and speaks French, German and Spanish. Not surprising, then, that he currently works as a language teacher in a secondary school, while studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London, under Jo Shapcott and Andrew Motion. However, Kunaratnam’s winning poem was written before he started the course, while working in Malvern: we publish a more recent piece below. The poet has also published in Agenda, Magma, Haiku Scotland, Stand and The Interpreter’s House.

Alan Brownjohn writes: Neetha Kunaratnam’s arresting poem ‘The Afterlife’ has an epigraph from the Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska: “After every war / someone has to clean up. Things won’t / straighten themselves, after all.” With a combination of blunt directness and powerful irony, Kunaratnam guarantees the reader will understand what’s involved in this usually forgotten process. “Cleaning up” after technologically sophisticated warfare (the Falklands, Kosovo and two wars in Iraq come to mind) requires money for more technology (“mine detectors and nerve sensors”), the deployment of expendable people, the harnessing on behalf of farmers of the victims’ petitions and prayers. Dried food stores and discarded prosthetic limbs must be sorted, the justifications (the dossiers?) explained, the safety of vegetation checked. Kunaratnam’s poem ends a frightening and moving survey of destruction and suffering with his shaming image of the cluster bomb, symbol of the new inhumanity.
 

Neetha Kunaratnam

The Afterlife

After every war
someone has to clean up. Things won't
straighten themselves, after all.

- Szymborska, The End and the Beginning

 
And someone will have to clean up,
But this is no job for ordinary Joes,
Only specialists padded in moon boots,
Facemasks, and white chemical suits,
 
So someone will have to write out a cheque
For the foreign input, the expertise
And expensive equipment:
The mine detectors and nerve sensors,
 
Somebody will need to order them
From the front of the catalogue, ignore
The solar-powered, GPS models, plump
For the standard, remote-controlled breed,
 
As faithful and expendable as someone else,
Sought to cordon off the area, skirt the perimeters
On tiptoe, and mark out the dimensions
Of the operation with only sniffer dogs in tow.
 
Someone will need to believe the aggrieved can
Make a difference, pray in numbers, and petition
Our leaders to subsidize the farmers, who can no
Longer reap lest they're blown into thin air...
 
Someone will have to locate then collect
Any bright packages dropped in the interim,
Since the bombers droned off into the night.
Their black boxes still replaying screams,
 
And someone sort out the dried food
From the prosthetic limbs, filter out the notes
Of explanation, and decipher a rationale
From the mistakes made in translation.
 
Someone will have to point out
That mustard leaves might not survive the blasts,
And checking they've turned red might set off
A barrage of blinding and a cluster of regrets,
 
Somebody will have to teach the children
That these M&Ms aren't filled with peanuts
But pack a mighty punch. Explain that
A bomb as small as a battery can turn a sheep into a cloud

 
 
 

Beeline
 

When the engineer pins
the bee’s wing down
to a blueprint,
delves and rips
into its secrets,
 
and Faust-like
trades knowledge
of the light-stitched,
pluck-tough surface
 
to a City conglomerate
raking it in from
an underground cache
of fighting machines,
 
When the hives lie abandoned,
apiarists now only landlords
of rotten honeycomb,
 
the poignant pleas
lost in the knowledge
that the mighty transmitter
deflected them far off course,
 
When the orchards’ crab
and scrumpy lie barren,
with white nausea of pollen,
 
when the sprays we concoct
try to mate with the blossom,
 
and the high street bosses regret
the shortage of honey and coxes,
squashes and almonds; 
 
When the queen abdicates her
brood chamber, sick of
the constant flux and bummed 
 
by her poor ratings, flees
to hang in a hollow tree,
her solitude a slow dying,
 
When the smoke of
pine needles and hessian
no longer waylays them
 
from their path
as if they’ve homed in
unerringly on some God given
 
(Do any of us know where they’re headed?)