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.
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He has worked as a political journalist, drama critic, book reviewer, war correspondent, foreign correspondent and columnist.
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He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1994 to 1999.
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In 2007, James Fenton was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
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His volumes of poetry include Terminal Moraine, The Memory Of War, Children In Exile and Out Of Danger.
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James Fenton was particularly appropriate for the specially commissioned memorial poem, being an ex-war correspondent as well as a leading poet.
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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.
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Memorial
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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.
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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.
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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
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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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