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Rights held by Joanne Maria McNally and for all individual poems published in XChanges

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'I found this ('Knowing') extremely well written'

Juliet Annan, Literary Director, Penguin, Nov 2002

I think it works very well, and I like it a lot ... I find it very visual, and it does keep conjuring up images each time I read it

John Sandford, Editor of German Life and Letters, re. Bones of War long poem

You can hear Joanne Maria McNally reading some of her poems from ‘XChanges’ recorded at the European Lyric Voices Festival in Nov 2008 (www.lyrikline.org).

The long lyric poem ‘Bones of War. A Poem for Peace’ was composed over two days in September 2004 when the poet was also steeped in research on the Second World War 1944-45: the image of the ‘Skeleton of War’ suddenly came to life in her mind and began its devastating march through the twentieth century, beginning with the First World War, before finally disintegrating in the present. Over two days in 2006, Joanne Maria McNally worked with cellist, Julie Spencer, to bring the poem to life with a special composition for cello (studio-recorded in 2007).

The prose-poem ‘Knowing’ is based on the poet’s own historical research, and her relative’s personal account, about British, Maori, Palestinian and Russian prisoners of war (and others) put to work in the mines beneath Auschwitz, Upper Silesia, and their forced marches from the area covering 800 miles to Bavaria between January and May 1945. It is based on what she had discovered by November 2002. The thematic content is truly new to the majority of the public, but also historians working on this period of the past.

She has since discovered a lot more and has interviewed and filmed many survivors since 2002 which form the basis for her non-fiction work ‘Marching without Knowing’ and ‘Underground Auschwitz’ (logged with the BBC in Oct 2005) and her portable exhibition (2007).