摘要：Not only do these lines echo the title of Robyn Rowland's book of 19 poems centred on the .anakkale and Gallipoli campaigns of World War I, but they also e ncapsulate the whole emotional, philosophical and aesthetic ethos of the collection. Rowland is an Australian poet who spends much time in her ancestral Ireland. She is well - travelled, and is nowadays a frequent visitor to Turkey. This cosmopolitan backgro und, aligned, crucially, with the desire to convey truth through her poetry, 1 ensures that the poems in This Intimate War do not merely perpetuate the Anzac myth but represent the experiences and emotions of ordinary troopers on both sides of the trenches. In evoking the wholesale carnage that was Gallipoli, Rowland's powerful language raises the reader's consciousness of the affinity between the enemies: '... now i know him in the trenches best, / his ribs thin like mine, his bandaged foot, / that cough at night, the black sleepless shape of his death' ('Close' 38). It establishes the meaninglessness of boundaries drawn along lines of nationality amid 'bodies heaped so you couldn't tell / what country they were from ...' ('Green Road' 72). It highlights the redundancy of denominational differences, when 'faith is everywhere like bloodied green grass' ('thank heavens' 18) and where a misguided belief in authorities that 'know the purpose' ('Luck' 86) displaces the cry to an inscrutable deity: ' sweet jesus, al lahu akbar, mary mother of god / yes sir, sergeant, commander, captain, lieutenant' ('thank heavens' 18).
