Uploaded May 2015 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's a virtual movie of a poem "Dance Grotesque" written by the British Soldier Poet John Rimington who was a "Desert Rat" as the soldiers serving in the Western Desert between 1939 - 1943 were called. I haven't found a photo of John Rimington or any biographical information other than that he did survive World War Two,and was one of a group of British soldier poets who's work had been originaly published by a wartime collective of poets known as the Oasis poets. The photo used here is of an unnamed Desert Rat which I have used as our reciter of this short bitter sweet poem that utilities the cynicism of battlefield humour to describe the felling of a fellow soldier as he spins "Arabesque" from the dance move "a posture in which one leg is extended backwards at right angles, the torso bent forwards, and the arms outstretched, one forwards and one backwards" to his death.
he OASIS poets came together in Cairo in World War Two, and published their first selection of wartime poetry there in 1943. Whereas most of the poetry of the First World War was written on the Western Front in France and Flanders - the great majority of it by officers - it was the desert war in North Africa that first inspired many of the poets of World War II.
To find out more about more about the soldier poets of the Western Desert during World War 2 you can listen to the radio documentary that the soundtrack for this animation comes from here..
youtube.com/watch?v=LLXefvOZz6c
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2015
Here's a virtual movie of a poem "Dance Grotesque" written by the British Soldier Poet John Rimington who was a "Desert Rat" as the soldiers serving in the Western Desert between 1939 - 1943 were called. I haven't found a photo of John Rimington or any biographical information other than that he did survive World War Two,and was one of a group of British soldier poets who's work had been originaly published by a wartime collective of poets known as the Oasis poets. The photo used here is of an unnamed Desert Rat which I have used as our reciter of this short bitter sweet poem that utilities the cynicism of battlefield humour to describe the felling of a fellow soldier as he spins "Arabesque" from the dance move "a posture in which one leg is extended backwards at right angles, the torso bent forwards, and the arms outstretched, one forwards and one backwards" to his death.
he OASIS poets came together in Cairo in World War Two, and published their first selection of wartime poetry there in 1943. Whereas most of the poetry of the First World War was written on the Western Front in France and Flanders - the great majority of it by officers - it was the desert war in North Africa that first inspired many of the poets of World War II.
To find out more about more about the soldier poets of the Western Desert during World War 2 you can listen to the radio documentary that the soundtrack for this animation comes from here..
youtube.com/watch?v=LLXefvOZz6c
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2015
