The T.E. Lawrence Poems

Betsy Struthers is a poet and novelist and the author of Found: A Body.

With The T.E. Lawrence Poems, Gwendolyn MacEwen establishes her place as one of the finest Canadian poets. Winner of the Governor General’s Award in 1969 and of the A.J.M. Smith Poetry Award, she has written poetry, fiction, plays, and verse drama for radio. In this book, she has transformed the life of T.E. Lawrence — ”Lawrence of Arabia” — into powerfully moving poetry.

The book is divided into three sections dealing with Lawrence’s early life, his experiences with the Arab army during World War I, and his post-war existence and death. Most of the poems are addressed directly to the reader; Lawrence speaks in a tone of bitter despair. He is the man who knows too much, who fits in nowhere: illegitimate, homosexual, forced to play traitor to the Arabs he loves for the sake of a British Empire in which he doesn’t believe. The Lawrence of these poems is a man uneasy with the facts of his life, unable to take any satisfaction in the heroic status accorded to him:

Poets only play with words, you know; they too are masters of the Lie, the Grand Fiction.

Poets and men like me who fight for

contained in words, but not words.

What if the whole show was a lie, and it bloody well was —

would I still lie to you? Of course I would.

“Tall Tales”

Throughout the book, MacEwen sustains a masterful control over the language, speaking in long-line verses that build up incantatory power. Obsessed with the persona of this antiheroic hero, she is able to overcome barriers of sex, time, and place to make Lawrence’s voice the instrument of a thoroughly modern and topical cynicism. The T.E. Lawrence Poems are the best work MacEwen has written to date and the best long poem to appear in Canada. Not only is this book one that you must read, it is one that you will not soon forget.