Breathing - a new sculpture for Broadcasting House
James Fenton
James Fenton was born in Lincoln in 1949 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry.
He has worked as a political journalist, drama critic, book reviewer, war correspondent, foreign correspondent and columnist.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1994 to 1999.
In 2007, James Fenton was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
His volumes of poetry include Terminal Moraine, The Memory Of War, Children In Exile and Out Of Danger.
James Fenton was particularly appropriate for the specially commissioned memorial poem, being an ex-war correspondent as well as a leading poet.
His poem, Memorial, explores the extraordinary dedication and drive which motivates journalists, their drivers, and their interpreters, to return to conflict zones in the quest for journalistic truth.
Memorial
We spoke, we chose to speak of war and strife –
a task a fine ambition sought –
and some might say, who shared our work, our life:
that praise was dearly bought.
Drivers, interpreters, these were our friends.
These we loved. These we were trusted by.
The shocked hand wipes the blood across the lens.
The lens looks to the sky.
Most died by mischance. Some seemed honour-bound
to take the lonely, peerless track
conceiving danger as a testing ground
to which they must go back
till the tongue fell silent and they crossed
beyond the realm of time and fear.
Death waved them through the checkpoint. They were lost.
All have their story here.
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