Gallipoli

“Gallipoli” is the first of the seven poems that make up “The War Correspondent.” It gives a vivid description of the slum regions of Gallipoli, Turkey, at the time when British and French forces were billeted there on their way to the Crimea. The ten-stanza poem presents Gallipoli as a teeming, cosmopolitan, polyglot city. The first four stanzas all begin with the word “take,” as the poet, drawing on the work of the war correspondent William Howard Russell, evokes the sights and smells of various places around the world to give the reader a picture of the impoverished areas of Gallipoli.

The first reference is to Billingsgate, a well-known fish market in London, with its “scaling-knives and fish.” This is followed by a reference to outhouses in “English farmers’ yards” that “reek of dung and...