Mark Sheeky Artworks

About This Album

War Is Over is a series of six poems and musical works on the theme of the end of war, originally created for a couple of performance events for Cheshire Libraries to commemorate the end of the First World War. Mark and Deborah decided to avoid any clichés about the great war; it felt silly, inauthentic, to write faux-sad poems about imaginary soldiers that they had little knowledge of, so considered new aspects of the post-war period, and the aftermath of conflict.

Sheeky's contribution was Valhalla. He thought of the soldiers themselves and about warrior's glory, wondering if those dead warriors might feel insulted or patronised to be thought of as victims rather than fighters. This emotion was the basis of his poem 'Valhalla'.

Janus Never Blinks is a dramatic, funeral piece about the end of war, a poem suffused with mythical and imperial imagery. The poem by Deborah was featured in the Seven Arches Press book, Peterloo Poems by Manchester People. Asylum Flowers is based on a true story of an exhibition of war art by ex-army personnel. One Hat is about the austere rationing in 1940s Britain, and Struck Lucifers is about the immediate post-war period; from the cleaning up of the victory celebrations, to the British presence in the middle east.