From Baghdad to Sarajevo to Beeston: The War Poetry of Tony Harrison

Much has been written about Tony Harrison’s representation of the social and political class “wars” that have shaped British society. However, this critical depiction ignores his occupation of other war zones. In his role as a correspondent for The Guardian and The Observer during the Gulf and Bosnian Wars for instance, Harrison produced poems that directly responded to international events, even travelling to sites of conflict to produce poetic dispatches from the front line. A new reading of these poems, combined with a consideration of the poet’s archived notebooks, prompts a critical re-examination of the poet’s position as an international war writer. By examining Harrison’s poetry and archived documentation a new image of the poet emerges—one that confirms his place as a war poet for the twentieth century and which sheds new light on the moral, formal and aesthetic considerations that characterise his front-line poetics

‘A small, fierce being’: Jon Silkin, Isaac Rosenberg, and the definition of the Anglo-Jewish poet

Despite being “one of the most distinctive and distinguished of those British poets who began to publish in the 1950s”, the writer, editor, critic, and translator Jon Silkin remains a largely forgotten figure in contemporary poetry. However, with the publication his Complete Poems in 2015 and the availability of his archive, there has been a renewed critical interest in the charismatic, prolific, and contentious poet. Drawing heavily from Silkin’s unpublished correspondence, this article contributes to this revival by exploring his place within the post-1945 Anglo-Jewish community and his relationship to his Jewish identity and cultural heritage. In particular, it investigates how the First World War poet (and fellow Anglo-Jew) Isaac Rosenberg became a vital means through which Silkin articulated his poetic identity as one caught between two hyphenated cultures and histories and defined his relationship with his Anglo-Jewish contemporaries

Feeding Habits of the Non-Native Mayan Cichlid, Mayaheros urophthalmus, in Estuarine Tributaries of Southwest Florida

Foraging habits of the non—native Mayan Cichlid (Mayaheros urophthalmus) were investigated in the tidal tributaries to the Estero Bay and Wiggins Pass estuaries in southwest Florida (USA) during 2011—2013. Dietary analysis was conducted by identifying contents in the digestive tracts of 747 fish and volumetrically measuring the food items. Detritus was the predominant food item by frequency (97–100%), volume (34–48%), and alimentary importance index (47–64%). Bivalves, gastropods, decapod and cirriped crustaceans, coleopterans, serpulid polychaetes, and fish scales frequently (\u3e50%) occurred in samples but volume and importance differed among tributaries. Results indicate that the Mayan Cichlid in southwest Florida tidal tributaries is an opportunistic predator of hard—shelled invertebrates. Although there was considerable overlap in dietary composition, percent volume of food items was significantly different among tributaries during dry seasons. In each tributary, detritus was consumed in greater percentage during the dry season and benthic invertebrates were consumed in greater percentages during the wet season. Consumption of detritus, algae, and plant material may be incidental to predation on benthic invertebrates but more information is needed on digestion and assimilation of food items. Variability in diet among the tributaries in the current study and among other studies was presumably a function of habitat characteristics and the corresponding availability of prey types.