Beyond Barbed Wire, the Sea: A poem composed within Mooragh Internment Camp
Channel: Culture Vannin
Date: 2021-01-29

A poem composed during World War II by one of the internees of Mooragh Internment Camp on Ramsey Promenade, Isle of Man.
'Mooragh, July 1940' by F. F. Bieber, read here by Norbert Meyn within the grounds of the former Camp:

Beyond barbed wire
The sea,
And the sun’s last fire
Burning up a tree
And a cottage on the green hill.
Gulls idle on the beach,
Then rise into the air and cry.
The field across the bay we cannot reach,
We can but pace our cage and let our hungry eye
Take in far loveliness which will
Remain
Beyond our sadness and beyond despair,
Beyond our stubborn hope, beyond our fair
And puzzled sense of justice. They will stand,
This bay, this pier, this beach, this sea,
This distant friendliness of wooded land -
To bid farewell to us when we are free.

Norbert Meyn is a professional singer, coach and project curator at the Royal College of Music. He is Project Supervisor of 'Peter Gellhorn: The Musical Legacy.'
He visited the Isle of Man in 2017 as a part of 'Singing a Song in a Foreign Land‎,' the Royal College of Music research and performance project highlighting the contribution of musicians who fled from Nazi Germany and Austria ‎to musical life in Britain and beyond.
https://www.rcm.ac.uk/singingasong/

These Isle of Man concerts were generously supported by the Isle of Man Arts Council, Culture Vannin and the Malcolm Scott Dickinson Charitable Trust.

This film was produced by Culture Vannin.
Culture Vannin exists to promote, support and celebrate the culture of the Isle of Man.
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