Tuesday, March 25, 2025

"War Poetry Postcard" Contest Announced!


Literary organizations Middle West Press LLC and Collateral Journal have issued a short-fuze call for postcard-sized poems that thematically engage with the effects of war, state violence, and military service.

Contest deadline is May 3, 2025. 

This summer, up to three prize-winners of the inaugural “War Poetry Postcard Project” contest will have their poems published as visually engaging glossy 4x6 postcards, each suitable for mailing to friends, family, politicians, and others.

Learn more about the project at: linktr.ee/warpoets

“With the increasing chaos and friction of the world around us, and the decreasing utility of social media in building community, we’ve found ourselves looking for new ways to encourage artful conversations about experiences with the military,” says Randy “Sherpa” Brown (he/him) of Middle West Press LLC, Johnston, Iowa. Brown is a published poet and literary activist, as well as a 20-year retired U.S. Army veteran. “That can include chewy discussions about moral injury, honor, patriotism, mental health, resilience, and remembrance.

Collateral Journal founder and Pacific Northwest poet Abby E. Murray (they/them) supplied the project’s keynote poem, and will assist in judging contest entries. First published on-line in Rattle magazine Nov. 17, 2024, Murray’s poem “Hello, I am Not a Soldier” wrestles with a new dissonance felt within their active-duty U.S. Army family: “[...] Wherever I go, I cling to my hope / like a weapon I have been trained to love.”

North Carolina poet and U.S. Marine Corps spouse Lisa Stice, most recently the author of the poetry collection “Letters from Conflict” (2024) and co-editor of “Things We Carry Still: Poems & Micro-Stories about Military Gear” (2023), will also assist in judging. In addition to her on-going role as associate editor at Middle West Press, Stice recently joined the volunteer staff of Collateral Journal as the publications’ visual arts editor.

Submit up to 3 poems, each less than 26 lines each. New or reprint work is acceptable. Deadline for submissions is Sat., May 3, 2025. A Submittable link is here at this link.

Up to 3 prize-winners will be announced in early July 2025. Top prize includes a cash award of $50 (U.S.).

Each prize-winner will receive a set of 25 of their respective poems published as mailable postcards, and a trophy “War Poetry Postcard Prize-winner” coffee mug!

An entry fee of $9.99 (U.S.) will help the project cover production, mailing, and prize expenses. 

Each U.S. poet entering the contest will receive a packet of the 3 winning poems! (Alternative products may be available to international entrants.) Entries will also be considered for inclusion in a potential print and/or e-book chapbook to be published later in 2025.

Established in 2016 by Abby E. Murray, Collateral Journal is a twice-annual on-line journal that features “literary and visual art concerned with the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone.” Murray is a former poet-laureate of the City of Tacoma, Washington, and the author of the poetry collections “Hail and Farewell” (Perugia Press, 2019) and “Recovery Commands” (Ex Ophidia Press, 2025).

Incorporated as an independent micro-publisher in 2015 by freelance editor and writer Randy “Sherpa” Brown, Middle West Press LLC annually produces from 1 to 4 projects of non-fiction, journalism, fiction, and poetry. Brown’s credits include a poetry collection, “Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire” (2015), as well as other work.

Middle West Press’ literary projects often celebrate the people, places, and history of the American Midwest, as well as U.S. military veterans and families. Past projects include anthologies such as “Giant Robot Poems: On Mecha-Human Culture, Science & War” (2024) and “Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War” (2019).

Thursday, November 21, 2024

How to Be a War Poet — Part 8



In a new series of 12 monthly essays, poet, journalist, and U.S. Army veteran Randy “Sherpa” Brown explores how military service members, family members, and citizens can develop a practice of poetry toward improved mindfulness, empathy across the “civil-military divide,” and even political or social action. 

* * * * *

How to Be a War Poet — Part 8
“In Flanders Fields the Poppies Blow”

Let slip the phrase “war poem” to poet or professor, and there are a couple of World War I texts that seem to universally answer the call: A first would be “In Flanders Fields,” written by Canadian Lt. Col. John McCrae. McCrae was a physician who served in World War I field hospitals in France and Belgium; he died of pneumonia before the end of the war.

A second oft-cited poem would also come from the first world war: “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen. Owen was a British officer, and died in combat a week before the cessation of warfare on Nov. 11, 1918. He is remembered today for a number of poems, but particularly for “Dulce Et Decorum Est.” The latin title is the first part of a quote from the ancient Roman poet Horace, the full line of which that translates as “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” 

Each of these poems is about remembrance. Each, however, offers a slightly different take on what is to be remembered, and what is to be done in present day.

In evoking the battlefield cemeteries of France and Belgium, McCrae’s 1915 poem “In Flanders Fields” its likely the origin of the annual appearance of poppies each November 11th—“Remembrance Day,” as it is celebrated in Commonwealth and other countries. (In other countries, the date is “Armistice Day,” which relates to the initial end of the First World War at “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.”) In evoking the memory of wartime dead, the red poppies of Remembrance Day frequently appear as lapel pins. You’ll also like annually encounter flowery images in children’s artwork and social-media posts.

(In the United States, November 11 is “Veterans Day,” which commemorates all those who have served in uniform, while the related commemoration of the honored military dead functionally gravitates more toward “Memorial Day” every month of May.) 

McCrae’s poem memorably begins:

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below. […]”

Among veterans of all countries, Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est” is a particular shibboleth—a text that seems to signal one’s access to secret and shared knowledge, regarding what it means to have served in uniform. Bearing gruesome witness to the industrialized horrors of chemical warfare, after all, Owen’s poem exposes any promise of battlefield glory as an empty one:

“[…] Obscene as cancer,
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie:
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.”

Remember the old lie? That “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”? There is no glory in war—only bitter sights and smells and injuries. We cover and clutter up the old lie, whenever we dress up our memories of service with ribbons, medals, and other mementos. But it is a constant, across all branches and eras. Part of my expanded application of “The Thin Red Line.”

A related thought: American soldiers sometimes still use the historical phrase “seeing the elephant.” Although the phrase dates from the 1800s—whatever the origin story, the through-line involves a quest or journey for an ultimately disappointing experience.  We joke about whether or not new soldiers have yet “seen the elephant”—whether they have yet experienced the disappointing reality of war. I’ve also heard it used regarding military service in general. Consider it a highfalutin’ way to say “BOHICA,” perhaps, or to reference being visited by the “Green Weenie.”

It might be also appropriate to note that elephants are also thought to have good memories. Some experiences, disappointments, and memories are harder to shake. (A friendly reminder of the unnumbered Sherpatude: “Poetry can be therapeutic, but it sure as #$%^ ain’t therapy.”)

To me, Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum …” seems to imply that veterans should pass along the truth—the old lie, the real deal, the lessons-learned, the scoop, the gouge—in order to dissuade young people from participating in future wars. Or, at least, from investing so much of themselves into believing in the elephant.

Owen enlisted in 1915, was wounded by artillery in 1916. Diagnosed with what we would now label Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), he convalesced for a time in Edinburgh, Scotland, during which time he met fellow poet and officer Siegfried Sassoon. He returned to full active-service in France in July 1918.

A quote by Owen notably appears on an inscription Westminster Abbey’s “Poets’ Corner,” commemorating 16 poets of World War I. The quote is taken from Owen’s preface to his collection, posthumously published in 1920: “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. […]”

When I was younger, I struggled to fully comprehend what Owen meant by the “pity” of war. One dictionary definition of the word is “the feeling of sorrow and compassion caused by the suffering and misfortunes of others.” Another, as a verb: “to have sympathy or show mercy for.” As a different kind of noun: “something regrettable.” Now older, I am content to maintain a certain fog around the term. I am comfortable with interpreting Owen’s “pity” as including all of these meanings, and possibly more.

There is a truism often spoken among poets—in casual research, I have failed to locate the origin of the phrase—that “all poetry is elegy.” This statement strikes me as true and useful. An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and usually more-specifically, a lament for the dead.  And any poem is an attempt to capture a moment in the past-tense—an event, a feeling, an observation. Even if imagined or composed in present-tense, the poetic moment on the page is always perceived as having happened in the past—it is a report, delivered to the reader. And because of this, every poem carries a seed of suggested mortality—a whiff of yet another latin phrase: “memento mori.”

The phrase refers to a trope that shows up in writing and visual art: “remember that you will one day die.” In it, Christians may hear echoes of “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” I’m no religious scholar, but this quote from the Quran also seems similar: “Indeed, we belong to God, and indeed to Him is our return.” I’m told that Buddhists meditate toward a mindfulness that death can strike at any time, and that, because of this, we should take advantage of every breath.

What should we remember, particularly in the month of November, as Americans celebrate Veterans Day and others celebrate Remembrance Day? Remember, that we will each one day die.

In both form and function, McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” and Owen’s “Dulce Et Decorum Est” are  each explicitly an elegy. Given its suffocating details of chemical death, Owens’ strikes me as a little more reportorial than aspirational. His tone is also one of compassion (for those who have died) and rebuke (of those who sent the dead to war). In contrast, however, consider the last stanza of MacCrae’s poem, which seems to urge continued conflict, suggesting that the dead be somehow avenged:

“[…] Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”

I love the imagery of MacCrae’s fields—I’ve purchased and worn my share of poppies—but I’ll also admit that the red poppies feel a bit blood-thirsty now. Now older—more world-weary, if not particularly wiser—I would prefer to regularly plead for peace, rather than for vengeance.

Remember Owen’s preface regarding the “pity of War”? He continues in his collection’s introduction:

“Yet these elegies [his poems] are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why the true Poets must be truthful.”

He continues: “If I thought the letter of this book would last, I might have used proper names; but if the spirit of it survives—survives Prussia—my ambition and those names will have achieved themselves fresher fields than Flanders.”

Remember these words: Remember the fallen. Remember the old lie. Remember that you, too, shall die. Pity us all.

Next: Finding Your Tribe, Finding Your Troupe.

* * * * *

Randy “Sherpa” Brown is a 20-year retired veteran of the Iowa Army National Guard, and the author and named editor of more than six military-themed poetry collections, anthologies, and chapbooks of poetry and non-fiction. One recent such project is “Things We Carry Still: Poems & Micro-Stories about Military Gear,” which he co-edited with fellow war poet and military spouse Lisa Stice (“Letters in Conflict: Poems,” 2024). Since 2015, he has served as the poetry editor of As You Were, the literary journal of the non-profit organization Military Experience and the Arts. He also regularly shares tips and techniques regarding military-themed writing at The Aiming Circle, a patron-supported community of writing practice. More info: linktr.ee/randysherpabrown

Thursday, October 17, 2024

How to Be a War Poet — Part 7


In a new series of 12 monthly essays, poet, journalist, and U.S. Army veteran Randy “Sherpa” Brown explores how military service members, family members, and citizens can develop a practice of poetry toward improved mindfulness, empathy across the “civil-military divide,” and even political or social action. 

* * * * *

How to Be a War Poet — Part 7
“Real Sailors Write Poetry”

Originally scheduled for publication Oct. 24, 2025 this essay was extensively revised and reposted following the November 2024 U.S. presidential elections.

I’ve been a little at sea recently. The last time I wrote an angry war poem—one about the military, and what it means to lead and serve—it was about an acting U.S. Secretary of the Navy’s leaden response to an aircraft carrier full of U.S. sailors. As a military veteran, I was nearly dumbstruck at the time—at the appalling arrogance of a senior civilian leader, as full of himself as he was ignorance of military culture, tradition, and values. I found my way out of that squall via poetry. I talk about that later in this essay.

I’ve experienced similar feelings of disbelief and betrayal after the recent U.S. presidential elections. According to news reports, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate the least-experienced Secretary of Defense in the history of the United States. Yes, Pete Hegseth is a U.S. Army veteran—he may have even briefly been a member of my beloved 34th Inf. “Red Bull” Division, although I’ve not yet been able to confirm/deny. He reportedly served three overseas deployments as a company-grade officer. He is also FOX News commentator, who has in the past spouted extremist opinions regarding soldiers who are women or trans, among other topics. He was reportedly once judged too extreme to deploy to Washington, D.C. to provide security for a presidential inauguration.

These are dark and interesting times, with elected and appointed civilian leaders who are apparently willing to diminish the professionalism of those citizens who choose to serve in uniform. I worry that, to quote an admiral in “The Hunt for Red October” (1990): “This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll be lucky to live through it.” Current service members and families may have to navigate some rocky waters in the years to come. Maybe some veterans, too.

I am reminded of this haiku, part of a sequence I once wrote prompted by a call for 150-word micro-essays addressing the theme: “what should a military professional profess?” Rather than 150 words, I delivered 7 haiku, including:

“Your moral compass
should be red-light readable
for work in the dark.”

* * * * *

In April 2020, during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, acting U.S. Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly relieved Capt. Brett Crozier from command of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, which was then at port in Guam. Crozier had requested via e-mail to quarantine his crew of approximately 5,000, given an outbreak of the then-novel virus aboard ship. Unfortunately for Crozier, the memorandum was eventually leaked to the media. (Some related lessons-learned here at this link.)

Relieving Crozier of command, Modly boarded the Theodore Roosevelt to address all hands via the 1MC—the ship-wide public-address system. Reading-back the transcript of the rant now, it encapsulates so much arrogance, lack of care for the troops, and ignorance of military culture and bearing. It sounds like a climactic scene-chewing, lost-my-marbles-and-my-bearing movie monologue, worthy of Bogart’s Captain Queeg in “The Caine Mutinty” (1954), or Nicholson’s Col. Nathan Jessup in “A Few Good Men” (1992).

In his 1MC tantrum, Modly said to the crew: “[I]t was my opinion, that if he didn’t think that information was going to get out into the public, in this information age that we live in, then he was [...] too naive or too stupid to be the commanding officer of a ship like this.”

The audio recording also captured the crew’s negative vocal protests to the speech. Later, as the relieved commander left the ship, the crew chanted Crozier’s name in support of their former captain. (A later acting secretary of the Navy later recommended Crozier be restored to command, although that did not happen.)

I later wrote a poem about the Modly-Crozier affair, linking the story to a lesson taught by a beloved teacher of history and government. My poem, titled “humility” (published in “Twelve O’Clock Haiku: Leadership Lessons from Old War Movies & New Poems”) evokes the tragic tale of a World War II submarine, USS Tang. In my senior year of high school, Miss Barbara Hess cryptically assigned me to research the Tang, with no other information than the ship’s name. She told me that I would recognize the lesson she intended me to learn when I discovered a particular fact.

In October 1944, on their fifth patrol, the Tang’s crew fired a last-remaining torpedo at a Japanese transport:

“[…] The Tang’s last torpedo porpoises, circles back, and strikes its own boat.
78 sailors are killed. When Kane and 8 others get to the surface, they are beaten by their Japanese rescuers.

In 2020, an acting Secretary of the Navy travels across the Pacific
to personally address the crew of USS Theodore Roosevelt.

Off-the-cuff, over the ship’s public address system, the Man in the Arena
calls their recently relieved-but-beloved captain either ‘too naive or too stupid.’

The torpedo circles back.”

Don’t worry, I’m headed somewhere with all this, roundabout and slant, like a torpedo gone wrong.

In September 2023, it was a U.S. senator who chose to denigrate and damage the military services. From February to December 2023, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), a former college football coach elected to the senate in 2021, single-handedly blocked legislative action on hundreds of U.S. military promotions—including top jobs in the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the chief of Naval Operations (CNO).

During this timeframe, Tuberville was also known for aggrandizing his father’s World War II service, and running a charitable family foundation for veterans that reportedly dispersed few actual funds to actual veterans.

At one point during the legislative blockade, Tuberville remarked on FOX News: “Secretary Del Toro of the Navy, he needs to get to building ships, he needs to get to recruiting, and he needs to get wokeness out of our Navy. We’ve got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over the loudspeaker. It is absolutely insane the direction that we’re headed in our military, and we’re headed downhill, not uphill.”

The senator was holding the military service hostage because he doesn’t like poetry?! Obviously, Tuberville knows nothing of the navy, or its poetic traditions. 

 (My friend and fellow war poet Amalie Flynn, a U.S. Navy spouse who curates the poetry section at The Wrath-Bearing Tree literary journal, had fun with Tuberville’s lead-tongued torpedo. She designed a T-shirt for the non-profit journal’s “Wrath-Bearing Tees” fund-raising project. In red letters on gray fabric, the shirt reads, “Totally into Poetry on Aircraft Carriers.”)

The sea may be a harsh mistress, but they’ve inspired a fleet-load of poetry traditions. For example, there is a ship-board tradition of entering the first log-entry of a new year as some sort of verse. There’s even a 2023 collection of U.S. World War II deck-log poetry, “Midwatch in Verse: New Year's Deck Log Poetry of the United States Navy, 1941-1946.”

Starting in 2020, the U.S. Navy Heritage Command re-energized the practice with an annual “Deck-Log Poetry” contest. In the annual call for entries, the editors write: “The deck log is the official record maintained by all commissioned U.S. Navy vessels. While the contents of a deck log are generally fiercely regulated, the United States Navy has long held the tradition of the Midnight New Year’s Day Poem. The first entry of the New Year, written in verse, gives a brief glimpse into the minds of the sailors and shipboard life, and provides a human voice to the otherwise impersonal deck log.”

(The technique can work for modern land-lubbers, too. During one field exercise, while working the night-shift in an Army battalion’s Tactical Operations Center, or “TOC”, I attempted to rhyme all entries into the staff-duty journal. For the record, I used a DA Form 1594. Unfortunately, no one took notice—my war-poetry career was much delayed.)

Sailors need not wait to join the fleet, of course, before their first encounters with naval poetry. The “Reef Points” manual issued to all incoming midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, for example, traditionally includes a 1896 poem by R.A. Hopwood, an admiral and poet laureate of the Royal Navy. The poem is titled “The Laws of the Navy,” and sets into memorizable-rhyme approximately 20 bite-sized nuggets of sailorly wisdom. It begins:

“Now these are Laws of the Navy,
Unwritten and varied they be;
And he that is wise will observe them,
Going down in his ship to the sea;

As naught may outrun the destroyer,
Even so with the law and its grip,
For the strength of the ship is the Service,
And the strength of the Service, the ship.”

Hopwood’s poem contains continues with some advice potentially applicable to any military leaders facing off with fickle and feckless civilians. I’d love to talk with Capt. Crozier, for example, with the fourth stanza as a conversational prompt. Regardless of the personal consequences he suffered, I think he made the right call. A leader that doesn’t stand for their people isn’t a leader.

“Take heed of what ye say of your rulers,
Be your words spoken softly or plain,
Lest a bird of the air tell the matter,
And so ye shall hear it again.”

As further evidence of poetry’s place in the Navy, the poem’s fifth stanza is often referred to as “The Fifth Rule of the Navy.” Chief of U.S. Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday even cited it in his remarks to the graduating Annapolis Class of 2023:

“[...] On the strength of one link in the cable,
Dependeth on the might of the chain;
Who knows when though mayest be tested?
So live that thou bearest the strain! […]”

The captain of another U.S. aircraft carrier, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, has successfully incorporated poetry into a morale- and team-building practice aboard ship. Capt. Christopher “Chowdah” Hill took command of the “Ike” in March 2023. In an extensive, multi-page command philosophy titled “The Way of the Warrior-Sailor”—a title cheekily inspired by a Star Wars TV mini-series—puts forth his program of taking care of people, so that they can take on any mission. The 20-page illustrated document is extremely plainspoken and easy to read. In the book, Hill writes:

“Morale is the root of success. Morale leads to esprit de corps, sets the conditions for people to genuinely give a damn, and leads to a variety of successes – defeated enemies, ship survival, and conquering inspections. Too often, leaders demand things like mission success and ownership without taking into consideration what it takes to get there – sometimes ignoring morale or thinking of it as just a function of more time off or temporary happiness. Morale is way deeper than that. Morale is individual pride, human spirit, the spark of the divine.”

Where does poetry manifest itself in the ship’s daily life and morale? In a social media post on LinkedIn, Hill explained:

“Each day, the Warrior of the Day receives hands-on ship-driving instruction, a box of cookies, and a Warrior-sailor Pin (with requisite poem read aloud).” The small brass pin looks suspiciously like a helmet from the “Star Wars”-related television series, “The Mandalorian.” In the series, a members of a warrior clan often repeat the motto, “This is the Way.” It is a simple, low-cost, meme-able thing—a pop-culture artifact that is accessible to sailors of all ages and eras.

“The IKE ‘Warrior of the Day’ gets to the wear the Warrior Sailor Pin for life,” Hill continued, his tone good-natured and jovial. “To sanctify the pin, the following poem is read. It’s weird to read it out loud, but culture improvement requires a degree of weirdness and fanaticism …” Here’s the “Warrior-Sailor’s Poem,” in its entirety:

“Behold!

We have before us a genuine warrior-sailor.

Among the few who don the uniform,
even fewer rise above the rest.

Forged by sea, tougher than steel,
smiling in the face of danger.

These few warriors maser their tradecraft,
sharpening their sword, crushing every test.

Yes, indeed, these select few follow the Warrior’s Way:
A dogged love for their brothers and sisters;

The embodiment of true mission and purpose;
The pursuit of enemies crushed.

Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present
a genuine Warrior-Sailor.”

Poetry can seem silly and weird, but it can also be a lodestone. Particularly when you’re at sea.

Keep a watch out for poetry, and share it where you can. Celebrate people. Build community. Use whatever tools you have on hand. Keep your heads and your humor. Reforge those weaker links. Batten-down those hatches.

And don’t give up the ship.

Next: In Flanders Fields: War Poems on the Ground.

* * * * *

Randy “Sherpa” Brown is a 20-year retired veteran of the Iowa Army National Guard, and the author and named editor of more than six military-themed poetry collections, anthologies, and chapbooks of poetry and non-fiction. One recent such project is “Things We Carry Still: Poems & Micro-Stories about Military Gear,” which he co-edited with fellow war poet and military spouse Lisa Stice (“Letters in Conflict: Poems,” 2024). Since 2015, he has served as the poetry editor of As You Were, the literary journal of the non-profit organization Military Experience and the Arts. He also regularly shares tips and techniques regarding military-themed writing at The Aiming Circle, a patron-supported community of writing practice. More info: linktr.ee/randysherpabrown