First World War Poetry

First World War Poetry

".......Above all I am not concerned with poetry. My subject is war,

and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity."

-Wilfred Owen.

The First World War, or The Great War, was fought over the period

August 1914 to November 1918. Although this was fought in many

locations, and on a number of continents, the Western Front was the

scene of some of the most important and bloodiest battles of the War.

The Western Front was a series of trenches running through Belgium and

France that formed the front line between the Allied and German

forces. Many of the WW1 poets saw action on the Western Front.

The War was dehumanising and it brought home how quickly and easily

mankind could be reduced to a state lower than animals. The First

World War, with its mass volunteers and conscription of educated,

non-professional soldiers, saw the appearance of a new phenomenon -

the soldier-poet. For the first time, war poetry appeared designed to

educate its audience to the horrors of war.

The First World War provides a unique moment in the twentieth-century

in which literate soldiers, plunged into inhuman conditions, reacted

to their surroundings by writing poetry. In fact, as subsequent years

have proved, those poems have gone on to give a vision of this

historical event to the public which otherwise would probably have

gone unknown since it was a period of time when there was no reporting

as we know it, in terms of front line war correspondents for

newspapers, radio or television.

Rupert Brooke

Brooke was born in 1887 at Rugby where his father was a housemaster.

One of the many ironies of the war is that Rupert Brooke is remembered

as a war poet because his actual war experience consis...

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...because it only addresses

the poet’s feelings of personal loss. It has similarities in tone to

both The Soldier and In Flanders Fields because of its romantic

nature. It is not at all alike Dulce et Decorum Est since that is

purely relating to the horrors of War and Vera Brittain doesn’t

directly discuss the issue of war in her poem at all and unless the

reader knew she had lost someone in WW1 she might have been writing

about the loss of anyone close to her who had died under any

circumstance.

My Favourite Poem

I prefer Perhaps of all the poems because it is beautifully written

and is very touching. When I read the poem for the first time I was

genuinely affected by what she said and the way she said it. I could

see the imagery in her words and feel her pain at the loss of her

fiancée. It is a sad poem but the words themselves are very

beautiful.