OWEN, Wilfred

“I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is war, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”

Regarded by many as the greatest poet of the First World War, Wilfred Owen was born in Shropshire and began writing poetry as a young boy, inspired by the romantic poets; particularly John Keats. His family’s financial situation prevented him from attending the University of London despite his passing the matriculation exam, and he worked as a Vicar’s assistant in Reading and later a private tutor in Bordeaux, France. In 1915, after the outbreak of the First World War, he enlisted in the Special Air Service Regiment, also known as The Artists Rifles. He experienced several traumatising events during his service, including falling into a shell hole and suffering a concussion, and being caught in a trench mortar shell blast and spending several harrowing days lying unconscious amongst the remains of a fellow officer. He was diagnosed with shell-shock and, in the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, met and befriended fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon. He and Sassoon shared a desire to portray the war in all its gritty reality and his poems feature the terrors of trench and gas warfare; synthesizing Sassoon’s realism with his own romantic inclinations to create a horrifying but emotive style. Sassoon became a mentor to the younger poet and his annotations can be seen on early manuscript copies of Owen’s poems. In 1918 when Sassoon was invalided back to England after being shot in the head, Owen returned to active service and was awarded the military cross for his courage and leadership storming enemy strongpoints in Joncourt, Northern France.

He was killed in action on the 4^th of November 1918, exactly one week before the signing of the Armistice and the end of the war. All but five of his poems were published posthumously.

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