This Intimate War Gallipoli/Canakkale 1915: Icli Disli Bir Savas: Gelibolu/Canakkale 1915 [Paperback]

Robyn Rowland’s powerful poems record the experiences of soldiers, nurses and doctors, women munitions workers, wives, mothers, composers, painters and poets during the Gallipolli War,1915. It began with the Battle of Çanakkale and the defeat of the British navy. The land battle was hand-to-hand killing, the physical closeness of its soldiers unmasking the depersonalization of the propaganda of war. Importantly, the book finishes with a poem on women’s friendship 100 years after the war, and the healing nature of love.

Stories of Australian, Turkish and Irish men and women in these poems show the intimate nature of war; ‘not from the perspective of victory but from the perspective of those caught up in war, who, whichever side they were on, lost. –Lisa Gorton Both the English and Turkish languages face each other across the pages as the men faced each other across narrow spaces between the trenches. ‘In translating impeccably Dr Rowland’s poems into Turkish, Professor M. Ali Çelikel has commendably conveyed the epic depth and literary qualities embodied in the poems’. –Himmet Umunç ‘... we have no boundaries anymore. / we are killing ourselves in this intimate war’ (‘Close’ p. 40). Not only do these lines echo the title of Robyn Rowland’s book of 19 poems centred on the Çanakkale and Gallipoli campaigns of World War I, but they also encapsulate the whole emotional, philosophical and aesthetic ethos of the collection. – Catherine Akca, Transnational Literature Poetry collections about war by women are something of a rarity; to present each poem in English as well as in Turkish (translated by Mehmet Ali Celikel) makes this one stand out even more.... In many Australian accounts of Gallipoli, the Turkish defenders have been blurred. Rowland, with notable sympathy, brings them up close — nowhere more so than in the opening poem, than heavelsN