Poems recall memories of wartime pain
FROM the scars of war and abandonment to the loss and pains of love, Judy Langton's first solo book of poems bares all.
LEXI LANDSMAN
IN the seeds of war, the death of the heart. These are closing words in Judy Langton’s poem Lost Years.
The poem is a moving meditation on her life during the Holocaust as a three-year-old child -— from being sent into hiding, reunited with her mother, and losing her father.
Langton says that she has no vivid memory of the war years, except of the perpetual chaos and fear.
“I think a part of me died,” Langton, 68, laments. “I lost my father. It was incredibly difficult.”
Lost Years is one of the 47 poems that comprise her first book of poems, Forgotten Eyes, which will be launched at Gleebooks on September 13 by Australian poet Peter Skrzynecki.
The poems traverse her personal experience of love and loss, the psychological scars of war on her family, her mother’s suicide, and her love of travel and coming home.
“I didn’t write them as a catharsis at all,” she insists. “I suppose I thought they were subjects other people could identify with as well.”
Being a private person, Langton says she was surprised at how much she was willing to expose about herself in the poems. One such revealing poem, Afterthoughts, reflects on her mother’s suicide seven years ago.
“It was a very traumatic thing in our lives,” Langton says. “My mother was so hail and hearty, and then suddenly she committed suicide at 86.”
Though much of the terrain she crosses in her poetry carries a sense of nostalgia, loss and the frailty of the human condition, the later poems show her optimism and zest for life. But like the arch of emotion reflected in the poetry collection, Langton’s life has been a vicissitudinous one.
Langton was born in Hungary in 1941. She was hidden during the Holocaust and separated from her mother and infant sister.
“When I came back to my mother, I said, ‘do you still love me?’. I think it has stayed with me and I’m sure it’s affected my relationships. Having a big tear in my life -— losing my father and then being given away -— was a lot to deal with for a small child.”
Langton’s mother remarried and they fled to Australia in 1949.
Langton was schooled in Sydney and graduated from the director’s course at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts. She later moved to Melbourne to work at the Melbourne Theatre Company for many years, before taking various roles at several other theaters and working as a freelance writer.
She moved to the United Kingdom in 1985, and now shares her time between London and Sydney. “Although I live alone, I feel like I have had a fairly rich life with friends and travel,” she reflects. “I try and make the most of what I have.”
Langton has dedicated Forgotten Eyes to her mother. “My mother always said my poems were one of the few things that cheered her up towards the end of her life, when she was suffering from depression. She always wanted me to publish them. She’d be pleased that I’ve finally done it.”
Forgotten Eyes will be launched at Gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe on September 13. Enquiries (02) 9660 2333. The book is available from Gleebooks. www.gleebooks.com.au.