Burden [Paperback]

Burden is a poetry collection that tells the story of a seventeen-year-old British soldier, Private Herbert Burden, who was shot for desertion during World War I. He was one of hundreds so executed. It is now understood that many had committed no crime, but were suffering from PTSD. Burdens story is told in the voice of Lance Corporal Reginald Smith, the authors uncle. The author discovered years later in a box of papers that his uncle, Lance Corporal Smith, had befriended Private Burden but then was ultimately commanded to join in the firing squad that killed his friend.

This slim book reaches below standard indictments of warit shows us that terrifying, senseless, horrific dont go deep enough. To utter them, the eye must already be closing over. Smiths account is an object lesson in why poetry matters. It takes us to places even the best journalism cant reach.

Douglas Burnet Smithis the GG Awardnominated author, and Burden is his seventeenth book of poetry. He divides his time between Atlantic Canada and Athens, Greece. He is currently Writer-in-Residence for the Antikythera Archeological Dive Project on the island of Antikythera, Greece, and teaches in the English Department at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. This is a powerful and visceral book, written by Douglas Burnet Smith based on letters sent from the First World War front by Lance Corporal Reginald Smith, a distant relative. The relative was part of a squad that executed Private Herbert Burden for desertion. This story and the letters are the basis forBurden, written in verse form that transforms these events and conveys their emotional power, or as Smith puts it, gives 'voice and shape to the meditations of a ghost. Smiths harrowing, tautly crafted long poem brings events of a century ago from shadow into light. To call this book unflinching would be inaccurate, because it does flinchas many readers need to and will flinchat the storl#3