ANDREW SPARKE

STUTTHOF: LIFE AND DEATH UNDER THE SS

Five years in preparation – inspired by frustration – visiting an amazing concentration camp museum near Gdansk only to find virtually nothing in print in English about the place. An initial booklet led to lengthy research and eventually this full history of the camp, its creators, its inmates, its guards… Writing it also made me realise how little of what we think we know about the purpose and use of concentration camps (all 1200 of them in existence until 1945) is fact – what we know about is Auschwitz-Birkenau (a place unique in scale and purpose both as a death and labour camp). Stutthof was very different in so many ways. It’s a grim history but one full of tales of survival and humanity too.

Author City, Birmingham 2023 (Photograph courtesy of Lee Foxall)

https://www.facebook.com/andrew.sparke.1

Once upon a time, in another life, I was Chief Executive of a large local authority in the West Midlands, the climax of a thirty year career starting with a law degree and qualifying as a solicitor. During that time I was involved in writing or editing several public sector textbooks but everything else got put on hold. That’s the nature of the job. The privilege of early retirement changes everything. Now I write constantly. Hence the reason for setting up this entire publishing project. (For more of my views on writing and publishing click on the radio interview at the foot of this page).

“Sorry! No Polo mints or apples today, Arnie”.

Exhibition of works of Kiejstut Bereźnicki (Sopot, Poland)

THE HEADER 

Since few people ever go there, the picture along the top of this site was taken at Vava’u, one of The Friendly Islands (otherwise known as Tonga), a place I’m desperate to revisit and about which there’s now a book in the ‘In Search Of…’series.

WILD VERSE

WILD VERSE is the brand under which I publish and perform poetry of a kind these days with Lee Benson, my so-called Incredible Fake Twin. Lee has also published several volumes of his verse and has his own page on this site.

FOUR STAR AMAZON REVIEW OF ‘BROKEN ENGLISH’ “…this debut collection…stands on its merits, needing no further endorsement than that of its content, which is honest, thoughtful and unpretentious. The disclaimer with which it opens makes this apparent with its offer of “something akin to poetry”, but there’s poetry here, though it might not readily satisfy the purists. That said, it will connect directly with many who’d never darken the poetry section of the bookshop, the simple reason being how familiar thoughts are given shape in these pieces.
The shapes are varied: lists, memorandums and sequences of prose feature beside the more obvious poems. These avoid the mechanical use of traditional metre, though – invariably – they find the natural rhythm for their content and operate within an effective underpinning structure. Unlike much of the poetry that’s offered these days, it’s wholly intelligible without losing the depth that encourages the reader back a second time or more. There’s an awareness, even so, that – at times – an image will “Say more than mere words ever will.” In the same poem (The Truest Picture), we sense the importance of getting the best angle: “Give me a camera I can use with one hand.” It is this selection of the right detail that affords this collection its originality and conveys something unique in its communication of experience…anyone who’s been in love will identify with the emotions described in this context – the hopes, the fears, the anxieties…The relational theme dominates, but around this epicentre are other compositions suggestive of the potential for diversification. These include observations about hereditary traits and characteristics (My Father’s Face and On Not Growing Up) and the names of places (Villages and Hamlets). Then there’s the feeling for history that’s betrayed almost incidentally in Somebody’s Sad Past, though history doesn’t impress the interesting woman encountered on this museum visit. Playful humour regularly surfaces in other people-watching sequences (Love Story and Those Legs.) If there’s an unembarrassed maleness about these and The Walk, it’s important to state that there’s no pretence of sainthood in the self-questioning Who Am I? where “Lawyer or sinner,/Worker or pensioner,/Father or son” are some of the alternatives considered. Anyone…will enjoy this collection and appreciate the inherent mix of confidence and vulnerability within it.” (NICK WARE)

PHOTOS

Hey, amazing guitarist Tommy Emmanuel likes his poem!

To protect a writer’s skull – the new ski helmet

Action research! (Soldeu, Andorra – January 2014)

Breakfast among the ruins – Ephesus (December 2014)

Janek critiquing a humourous verse written for him (April 2015)

Working breakfast at Kasha and Fred’s near Gdansk (May 2015)

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: A surprising fact is the disproportionate number of authors who’ve emerged from a small school in South Devon, Teignmouth Grammar School. Four of them are published by APS Books: Barbara Whitton, Chris Grayling, Pete Sears and Andrew Sparke. In addition we publish a discography for another TGS veteran, Phil Beer and his folk band Show Of Hands. Suspect some credit’s due to teachers like Adam O’Riordan and Adrian Davis as well as the creative hive of all forms of creative energy that was the TGS Annual Eisteddfod.

PUBLIC SECTOR

For completeness rather than because this stuff should be of any current interest, here’s where the published writing and editing career of Andrew Sparke started: