Kerrin P. Sharpe |
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the last soldiereven before his birth he knew the sky
his childhood flew around
1914 he learnt
bolt barrel bayonet nearer tomorrow
those carnations
became handfuls
in the word war he his memory heavy with stone
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Kerrin P. Sharpe is a teacher of creative writing. She completed Bill Manhire’s Original Composition class at Victoria University of Wellington (1976). She has been published widely in: The Press, Takahe, Snorkel #5 and #6, Turbine 07, bravado 13, Poetry NZ, The New Zealand Listener and Junctures. One of her poems in bravado 13 has been selected for publication in Best NZ Poems 2008. Also in 2008, she was awarded the New Zealand Post Creative Writing Teacher’s Award from the International Institute of Modern Letters. Sharpe writes: “This poem was written after I had read an obituary for 110 year old Lazare Ponticelli who was the last French foot soldier from World War I. He had promised his dying comrades he would always remember their faces, but as the years went by, he found that more and more difficult.” |
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