June - 'The Long Take' by Robin Robertson

This month’s book – The Long Take by Robin Robertson- was a big ask for the group. Robinson is a Scottish-American major poet now in his older years who has written about the devastated personal lives of returned American servicemen after World War Two. Walker, a reporter and war casualty meets and interviews many of these men, now down and out, frequently drunk and living on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco. He too has frequent flash backs of the carnage and deaths of his platoon members in France. These men have been abandoned by a government who doesn’t care about them and abandons them to destitution on their return from the war. The book is written as a long poem in free verse and contains stunning images and  poems inserted into the narrative.
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Meg Dillon