I Brought the War with Me: Stories and Poems from the Front Line

by Lindsey Hilsum

I was standing outside an apartment block that had been split apart by a missile. The words of a poem came to me when I could no longer find my own.

In nearly four decades as a journalist covering conflict from Palestine to Kosovo to Rwanda, Channel 4 News International Editor Lindsey Hilsum has always carried a book of poetry. It helps her make sense of the senseless, salve her soul as the world around her rages, and remember those she has met in the darkest of times.

In Ukraine, she tweeted a poem a day, and people began to read, to share, to ask for more. Here, Lindsey collects her favourite poems from ancient times to modern, translated from different languages and by writers from all around the world. Alongside each, she recalls a memory from her own work, whether interviewing the warlords of Bosnia and Sudan, meeting child soldiers in Uganda or giving testimony about the genocide in Rwanda. Her prose reveals comic absurdity and astonishing courage, meaning and its absence, unexpected moments of love and the untold consequences that come long after most cameras disperse. She explores the pity of war – and its fatal attraction.

Vital, authentic, a read like no other, this is the first account Lindsey has written of her experience, accompanied by the voices of poets through the ages who have fought, witnessed terror or fled their homes, yet found the words to capture their humanity.

Genres: Poetry, War, Nonfiction

262 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 19, 2024

About the author

Lindsey Hilsum is the author of "In Extremis: the Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin" (2018)and "Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution" (2012). She is the international editor of Channel 4 News, and has covered many of the conflicts of recent times including Syria, Ukraine and Libya as well as the Trump administration, terror attacks in Europe and refugee movements. She was Beijing Bureau Chief from 2006-8, and reported from Baghdad during the 2003 US invasion, and Belgrade during the NATO campaign in Kosovo. In 1994, she was the only English-speaking foreign correspondent in Rwanda when the genocide started. Lindsey writes for Granta and the New York Review of Books, and has won several awards for her journalism including the Patrons' Medal from the Royal Geographical Society. Before becoming a journalist she was an aid worker, first in Central America and then in Africa.

Reviews

[Flo Rind · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found it in the national poetry library in London and bought it as soon as possible afterwards.

More than anything I loved the method of the book - combining poetry and journalism and creating a new third thing that goes above both, just by placing them next to each other. I would have struggled to understand both the journalistic retellings and the poems had they been apart. As it was I really do feel like the book had brought the war to me. It not only taught me or made me remember facts, numbers and years but was able to connect them to real understanding of emotions. It showed the horrors of war beyond individuals, time and place and made someone with no connection to it them feel connected anyway.

[Phoebe Swanwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heartbreaking stories of the reality of war :( Mix of real-life stories and related poems. Reading poetry took some getting used to

[Jill Thomson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lindsey Hilsum has spent nearly 40 years covering conflict in different parts
of the world.
She always carries a book of poetry with her.
In her remarkable new memoir ‘I Brought the War with Me’ she explains how poetry can help make sense in sometimes appalling situations and provide solace
in the darkest of times, as well as help crystallize her thoughts when she could not
find the words to express them.
Alongside each memory of conflict, ranging from Rwanda in 1994 to present day Palestine, and her experiences including meeting child soldiers, interviewing warlords, refugees, survivors of genocide, she chooses a poem to encapsulate that particular situation. The poems range from ancient times to contemporary, by writers from all over the world many of whom have witnessed terror yet never lost their humanity. She has an extraordinary empathy, particularly when talking to civilians, those whose stories we would never hear about if not for this book, people who have been caught up in and somehow survived the unimaginable.
Last night I watched Lindsey Hilsum reporting from Beirut and have so much admiration for her & other foreign correspondents who sometimes, along with their teams, risk their own lives to witness & provide clarity to the rest of us about what is happening on the ground.

I’m glad she has her favourite poems with her.

[Zachary Barker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have finished reading “I have Brought The War With Me: Stories and Poems From the Front Line” by Lindsey Hilsum.

Lindsey Hilsum is the International Editor for UK Channel 4 News.

“Only the dead have seen the end of war”.
Plato

“Journalism is of the moment. But Poetry lasts forever”.
Lindsey Hilsum

How does one convey the scale of the horror and the tragedy of war? Over 40 years Lindsey Hilsum started as an aid worker and then moved on to become an international journalist, eventually working as the International Editor for Channel 4. Early in her career by a disturbing twist of fate she ended up as the first foreign correspondent in Kigali, Rwanda in 1994 at the start of that country’s genocide. This gave her into an early insight into the human consequences of conflict.

Instead of a blow-by-blow memoir account Lindsey chose to recount some of her most memorable encounters with the victims of conflict (war and genocide) over the years, accompanied with a chosen piece of poetry.

I didn’t consider myself especially enamoured with reading poetry before reading this unique memoir. However, after reading it I have a new appreciation for it. The selection of poetry was incredibly well considered. Much of it were translations from international poets, each of which reflected on the different aspects of how conflicts effect ordinary people. As the author said; journalists are there to capture the here and now, poets are there to capture things differently, from a priceless and emotional human level.

The book is sectioned up into themes that include (but not exclusively) “courage”, “love” and “children”. The most emotionally challenging bits to read I found were those relating to children and war. I still remember watching BBC News with my late Grandmother as US Aircraft lifted off to attack targets in Iraq off an Aircraft Carrier in 2003. She worried deeply about the fate of the children who would die from some of the strikes. The most unforgettable part of the chapter on “Children” was the part that showed the tragic lives of two children born from rape victims from the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.

It is one thing to document how wars break out, but it is another thing to capture the essence of the absolute horror and loss they inflict on people’s lives. Lindsey’s way of doing it felt meaningful and respectful to war’s victims. The point she made was at the end was sobering, there will be other wars and both poets and journalists will be there to capture all sides of it.

[Robert L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a haunting but insightful book. This is a book not to be read as a novel or a biography. It is best consumed one story at a time, one day at a time. We learn about how war affects everyday people in their most vulnerable moments. Hilsum is a war correspondent who shares 50 brief glimpses of heartbreaking scenes from around the world. Each glimpse is paired with a short poem or a splice from a longer one from a different location but with a similar theme. I bought the book as a way to enhance my poem-a-day plan as part of my morning devotionals, but I became enthralled and horrified with the writing of the book’s author. She has an incredible way of distilling down a complex topic with a few cogent lines that provide us with a deeper understanding of the tragedy of war and its effects on the people it touches. The eleven key quotations etched indelibly in my mind include

"Once you strip away opposing religious or patriotic convictions the similarity between enemies can almost be unbearable."

about soldiers who face each other across battlelines and how

"Everyone who has been through war finds some experiences too painful to recall, but too searing to forget."

In one encounter, we view a little boy playing with his plastic brontosaurus as his family of refugees wait to cross into Europe. He does not realize that this event will change his life forever but we can envision the consequences. Hilsum is not a pacifist and understands there are times when a people or nation must take a stand concludes with this statement:

"Still, experience tells me that war never turns out as planned, and taints everyone it touches."

I am ready to put the book back on the shelf for now, but I plan to bring it back at a later day for another 50-day excursion, this time focusing more on the poems.

[Lucy Ash · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an valuable book for so many reasons. Alongside familiar names, Sassoon, Auden, Housman, Rossetti, you are introduced to a brand new cannon of war poets. I had never heard of half of the people in this collection including Enheduana who wrote around 2300 BCE in the ancient script of cunneiform and is regarded as the world's earliest named poet. Lindsey Hilsum suggests that the violent imagery in The Exaltation of Inana - a war goddess - would strike a chord with 21st century Islamic State. But she wryly points out that today's fighters would be "horrified to learn that the poet was a woman and the gods she venerated were female." I also like the way Hilsum matches episodes from her own four decades of war reporting with poems from very different conflict zones and yet there is always a common thread. Take for example her account of the confusion on the Belbek air force base in Crimea in 2014 paired with a poem written in 1950 by Pham Ho. Hilsum describes how men from Ukraine's 204th Aviation Brigade were confronted by a phalanx of heavily armed Russian troops. Just like the Ukrainians, the Vietnamese had never imagined fighting the men they once saw as brothers. The poem opens starkly: "I shot him. /The beautiful and loving days gone by /Could not stop me." Erudite, heartfelt and deeply human.

[Rachel Holland · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and sombre weaving of Hilsum’s first hand stories from the front line of war, and poetry.

Hilsum’s experience as a journalist is palpable, she has bravely documented some of the most devastating conflicts of the past 4 decades. The book confronts the brutality of war with such objectivity and sensitivity (what journalism should always do).

Books like this are what inspired me to pursue a journalism degree.

[The Contented · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Journalists focus on what is critical now-this village taken, that truce broken, a new atrocity by occupying forces. But poets through the ages have turned the horror of war into transcendent works of beauty and meaning.
Journalism is of the moment. But poetry lasts forever.’

A poetry anthology like little else

[Richard Goodfellow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have long been a huge fan of Lindsey Hilsum, the war correspondant. So perhaps my expectations were too high - or perhaps poetry is not for me. So, although I enjoyed Lindsey's (occasionally repetitive) short reviews on the wars she has witnessed, somehow the brief descriptions and even briefer poems or extracts thereof didn’t really satisfy.

[Ana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book of enormous scale. Especially hard to read it as a Ukrainian. I met Lindsey Hilsum at Manchester Literary Festival. I broke down in tears when I read Viktoria Amelina’s poem in the queue to sign the book; Lindsey was remarkably kind and encouraging.

[Maj · Rating 4 out of 5]

As one can imagine, this collection was intense. Lindsey Hilsum has truly seen some of the worst of humanity. And yet, she finds hope, beauty, and courage in poetry. My heart aches for all the lives lost and displaced in the world’s pointless power struggles.

[D HICKMAN · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully put-together and book combining harrowing anecdotes with very poignant poetry. A very memorable and special read.

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moving read, felt like an academic discussion on various poems on war and military conflicts.

[Jane Clarkson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard Lindsay Hilsum discuss her book and her experience with the equally wonderful Lyse Doucet in London. The book is extraordinary and brilliant and moving.