Taps on the Walls: Poetry as Equipment for Living

Vietnam War veteran and former POW John Borling has just published a book of his original poems composed while a prisoner of war at the “Hanoi Hilton,” a prison camp in what was then North Vietnam, for more than six years. Borling and his fellow POWs endured years of torture and horrid living conditions, barely surviving day to day. Yet they used ingenious means of communicating—often by tapping out letters in code on the walls of their cells. 

Borling “wrote” the poems that appear in Taps on the Walls: Poems from the Hanoi Hilton by crafting the lines in his head, memorizing them, and then sharing them with his fellow prisoners through the walls. Borling speaks of these poems’ role in helping him and others retain something of their humanity, in the midst of an unspeakably dehumanizing ordeal, through the “power of the unwritten word.” 

Listen to John Borling speak about this extraordinary experience and read some of his moving poems here. The book is on order and will soon be available in the Imperatore Library.