portsmouth poetry 

Rupert Brooke

1887 - 1915

Educated at Rugby School and King’s College, Cambridge; Brooke was typical of a new wave of literary talent which emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century – talented, progressive and inspiring -- he was a poet, scholar, dramatist, literary critic, travel writer and political activist. His friends included leading figures of his generation including W B Yeats, Churchill and Virginia Woolf with whom he went 'skinny-dipping' in a moonlit pool while at Cambridge. He was,  for a while, part of the legendary "Bloomsbury Group" until the end of a Statue of Brooke in Rugby                long term relationship with Katherine ('Ka') Cox led to paranoia and breakdown. Possessing Byronic good looks, W B Yeats described him as the “handsomest man in England”.  Brooke was bi-sexual, uncertain of and probably uncomfortable with his 

 sexuality. When war was declared, he was drawn to it with the same fervour that led thousands of young men and boys to sign up for the “great adventure” as if it were all a merry party. He wrote home that ‘It’s all great fun’, of his disgust with the objections raised and of the country’s need for a “blood letting”.

Julian Henry Francis Grenfell DSO 

1888 – 1915

Julian Grenfell was typical of the Victorian officer class from background to stiff upper lip. Born in St James's Square, London, educated at Eton (where he was good friends with fellow officer-poet Patrick Shaw-Stewart also listed here). and at Balliol College Oxford where he bullied Phillip Sassoon (brother of Siegfried).

He joined the army in 1910 and was awarded a Distinguished Service Order in 1914 for bringing vital reconnaissance information from behind enemy lines.

Grenfell’s attitude to war was a world away from the likes of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. It is best understood from a letter in 1914 - 

I adore war. ... It is like a big picnic ….. I have never been more well or more happy. ... It just suits my stolid health and stolid nerves and barbaric disposition. The fighting-excitement vitalizes everything, every sight and action. One loves one's fellow man so much more when one is bent on killing him." 

It should be remembered that unlike most war poets who enlisted when war was declared Grenfell was a professional soldier. That and his background explain his very different attitude to war.

On 13 May 1915  a shell landed a few yards away and shrapnel from it hit him in the head. He died of his wounds 13 days later with his mother, father and sister at his bedside. He was 27 years old and was buried at the Boulogne Eastern Cemetery. The Times published his most famous poem “Into Battle” the day after his death. Two months later his bother Billy was also killed in action less than a mile away from where Julian had been wounded.

Julian Grenfell is one of the 16 Great War poets commemorated in Poets Corner Westminster Abbey.

W.N. Hodgson

1883-1916

William Noel Hodgson was educated at Durham School (where he was friends with Nowell Oxland also listed here) and Christ Church College, Oxford. He volunteered for the British army on the outbreak of the First World War and served in the 9th Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment, landing at Le Havre in July 1915. He was awarded the Military Cross after the Battle of Loos and later promoted to Lieutenant.    

He was killed on the 1st of July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. His posthumous volume "Verse and Prose in Peace and War" was published in 1916, but he is probably best remembered today for his poem ‘Before Action’ which is believed to have been written two days before he died.

Nowell Oxland

1891-1915

The son of a Cumbrian vicar,  Nowell Oxland attended Durham School, where he was friends with fellow poet William Hodgson also listed         , Turkey          here. He read History at Worcester College, Oxford. He was a keen Rugby player and captain of his local team.

He was commissioned as 2nd lieutenant in the 6th Battalion Border Regiment in August 1914 and sailed for Gallipoli in The Empress of Britain on July 1915. 

Oxland took part in the landings at Suvla Bay on 6 August 1915 and  was killed in action three days later. 

He is buried in the Green Hill Cemetery at Suvla Bay. 

His best-known poem, Outward Bound, was written while on the way to Gallipoli  and published in The Times in August 1915 after his death. His collection “Poems and Stories” was published in 1916.

There is a memorial to Oxland at his father’s former church in Alston – St Augustine’s featuring two painted panels depicting portraits of Oxland as Saint Michael and Saint George.

Ewart Alan Mackintosh

1893-1917

Mackintosh was probably named after William Ewart Gladstone who was a friend of his grandfather. Born in in Brighton of Scottish descent, he studied at Brighton College, St Paul’s School, London and Christ Church, Oxford, where he joined the Officers’ Training Corps. He was initially rejected for military service for poor eyesight but later accepted by the Seaforth Highlanders and commissioned as a second lieutenant on 31 December 1914. He was wounded in 1915 and awarded  the Military Cross in 1916. He was killed on the second day of the Battle of Cambrai on 21 November 1917. He was buried in the Orival Wood Cemetery near Flesquieres in  northern France.

His poem ‘Ghosts of War’ has been compared to the finest of Brooke’s work and lines form another ‘A Creed’ were used on the Scottish American war memorial in Edinburgh, installed in 1927.

If it be life that waits I shall live for ever unconquered.
If death I shall die at last strong in my pride and free

Robert H. Beckh

1894-1916

Born on New Years Day 1894 in Great Hamwell,   

  Cabaret Rouge Cemetery                   Hertfordshire   he  read Classics at Jesus College, Cambridge before enlisting as a private in the Royal Fusiliers (Public School Battalion) in 1914  as he felt that the best training for an officer was through the ranks. He was sent to France in March 1916 his Battalion located to trenches near Betrancourt.

He was shot leading a four-man patrol on the German lines on the night of 15 August 1916. He was initially buried in a German military cemetery with two other British soldiers but his body was lost in transit when the British authorities moved the bodies to Cabaret Rouge Cemetery in Souchez, France, He is memorialized on a gravestone in the Cemetery.

 A collection of Beckh’s poems "Swallows in Storm and Sunlight", was published posthumously by Chapman and Hall in 1917

Will Streets 1886 - 1916

John William Streets is one of the few working class poets in the list. The eldest of twelve children, born in 1886 in Whitwell, Derbyshire. A bright and talented boy he was offered a place at grammar school but chose to work as a miner in the local pit mine from the age of 14 to 28 to help support his family.  He continued his studies with the help of a mentor, John Mills.

On the outbreak of war Will Streets enlisted in the Sheffield City (Pals) Battalion. He spent 15 months training with the battalion near Salisbury and during this time wrote a number of poems. In December 1915 he was sent to the Suez Canal in Egypt and, after two months, moved to the Western Front in France.

In 1916 the found time to write poems and ideas in a pocket book (some of  which he sent home to his parents) whilst preparing for the Battle of the Somme. He was in the second wave of men sent over the top on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1st July 1916. He was wounded and  making his way back to the first aid post when he returned to help an injured comrade and disappeared.

Listed as missing, Will Street’s body lay in No Man’s Land for 10 months until it was body was recovered and identified. He is buried at Euston Road Cemetery, Colincamps. His poems were posthumously published in 1917 under the title "The Undying Splendour"

T.P. Cameron Wilson

1888-1918

Theodore Percival Cameron Wilson a poet and novelist. He was born in Devon the son and grandson of a vicar. His grandfather was also a novelist, his younger brother an actor and his sister also a poet. 

Known as "Jim" he had a questionable education, left Oxford without a degree and became a teacher 

Robert Vernède

1875-1917

Robert Ernest Vernède was born in London and educated at St Paul’s School and St John’s College, Oxford. After graduating he wrote novels and short stories. 

In 1914, though four years over the official age , he enlisted as a second lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion Rifle Brigade. He was wounded in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. After returning to the front he died after being wounded by machine gun fire while leading an advance at Havrincourt. 

He was buried at Le Bucquiere Communal Cemetery Extension.

His patriotic poem "The Call"  was published in The Times on 19 August 1914. By 1916, when he had actually experienced war, he was writing home to his wife in a very different vein

"I suppose I have just found out what it can be like. We have been heavily shelled for about two hours, and one sat there with intervals of seconds, it seemed, not knowing where the next would come … I still think it’s right that war should be damnable, but I wish everybody could have an idea of how beastly it can be" 

[6 February 1916]

Gilbert Waterhouse 

1883-1916

Born n Kent, Gilbert Waterhouse was an architect and later a poet. 

He enlisted as a private in the 8th Battalion Royal Fusiliers in September 1914 and applied for a commission the following year becoming a second lieutenant to the 3rd Battalion Essex Regiment. 

Posted to France,  was hospitalised in 1916 with a septic arm. On return to his unit, he was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916. He was initially posted as ‘wounded and missing’ and his death was not formally announced until March 1917. 

In July 1917 he was buried in the Serre Road No. 2 cemetery.

A sonnet ‘Coming in splendour thro’ the golden gate’ was published in The English Review in October 1915 and a volume of poetry, "Rail-Head and Other Poems" was published posthumously in December 1916

1891-1917

Arthur Graeme West's book chillingly titles The Diary of a Dead Officer published in 1919 covers the period from his enlistment in the army in 1915 to his death. It contains 10 poems alongside letters and diaries. 

Born in Norfolk and educated at Blundell’s School, he joined the Officer Training Corps at Balliol College, Oxford. where  Having been rejected for a commission because of poor eyesight, he enlisted as a private with the Public Schools Battalion in January 1915. 

He saw repeated action France in 1915 and was accepted for an officer training course in 1916. His diary described four months bullying and being ordered about by stupid NCO's that did more to turn him against war than the trenches had done!

While on leave in 1916 he wrote his most famous poem "God! How I hate you, you young cheerful men!". It attacks the empty patriotism and religious sentiment typical of 'soldier poetry' popular at the time. 

A second lieutenant in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, he returned to France and was killed by a sniper near Bapaume on 3 April 1917.

Patrick Shaw Stewart

1888-1917

Shaw-Stewart was talented high achiever matching academic brilliance, with a determination to succeed. He came first in the scholarship at Eton in 1901, and won a second in 1905 and a further three at Oxford where he was awarded a double first and elected a fellow of All Souls College. Instead he accepted a post at Barings Bank where he became its youngest managing director at the age of 24! 

A year later, he enlisted as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve in September 1914, joining the Hood Battalion in November. He sailed to the Dardanelles with his friend Rupert Brooke and William Denis Browne commanding the firing party at Brookes funeral on the island of Skyros.

Having survived the Gallipoli he was promoted to lieutenant commander and put in temporary command of the Hood Battalion in France in May 1917. He was killed near Cambrai on 30 December 1917 and is buried at Metz-en-Couture in the British extension to the communal cemetery.

His reputation as a war poet rests on two poems, ‘Achilles in the Trench’, one of the best-known WW1 poems written while he was waiting to be sent to fight at Gallipoli and ‘I saw a man this morning’ which was found after his death.

Robert W. Sterling

1893-1915

Born in Glasgow and educated at Sedbergh School and Pembroke College, Oxford, Robert Sterling won the Newdigate Prize for poetry in 1914 shortly before enlisting in the Royal Scots Fusiliers. His Battalion fought in the trenches at St. Eloi in Ypres. A close friend arrived unexpectedly at Sterling’s billet and was killed ten days later. Sterling wrote

“I think I should go mad if I didn’t still cherish some faith in the justice of things, and a vague but confident belief that death cannot end great friendships.”

Re-joining his battalion after hospitalisation with influenza, Sterling took part in the Second Battle of Ypres which began on 14th April 1915. He was killed by a grenade on 23rd April 1915. 

A collection of Sterling’s poems was printed by Oxford University Press in February, 1916

Leslie Coulson

1889 – 1916

Born in Kilburn, London, son of a columnist for The Sunday Chronicle who had worked his way out of East End poverty. Leslie (and his brother) attended boarding school in Norfolk, before becoming a reporter on the Evening News and then the Standard. 

He joined the Royal Fusiliers in 1914 and left the UK on Christmas Eve for Malta then Egypt (where he was hospitalised) and Gallipoli before arriving at the Western Front in 1916.

His collected poems, edited by his father, were published posthumously in 1917 and sold 10,000 copies in the first year. 

The best known of the poems is "Who Made the Law?" At the beginning his poems had gentle pastoral themes but this changed as he experienced the realities of war. From Gallipoli onward he began to question the generosity of nature and his later poems are dark with anger and humanity. “Who Made The Law” starts as a political statement but ends accusing God of betraying the human race which uses the earlier rural imagery as a contrast to the horror of war and its waste of life.

When night falls dark we creep
In silence to our dead.
We dig a few feet deep
And leave them there to sleep
But blood at night is red,
Yea, even at night,
And a dead mans face is white. And I dry my hands, that are also trained to kill,
And I look at the stars for the stars are beautiful still.

During the battle for the Transloy Ridges during the Somme, Coulson was shot in the chest and died the following day at Grove Town casualty clearing station. He is buried at the CWGC Grove Town Cemetery in Meaulte. 

The manuscript of Who Made the Law? was discovered amongst his possessions. It was written in September 1916.

Hamish Mann

1896 - 1917

Alexander James ‘Hamish’ Mann had written since his teens but it was the experience of the trenches which developed his poetry.

Born in Broughty Ferry, Scotland, he was educated at George Watson’s College in Edinburgh then, owing to illness, by private tuition. 

When the war started Hamish volunteered at Craigleith Military Hospital but in July 1915 he was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant in the 8th Battalion Black Watch. He was sent to La Comté, near Bethune France in August 1916 and took part in the Battle of the Somme and the 1st Battle of the Scarpe. 

Whilst leading his platoon during the advance at Arras in April 1917, he was seriously wounded by a shell and died the following day just five days after his 21st birthday!

At Craigleith Military Hospital Hamish had edited and contributed to the Craigleith Chronicle and several other publications under the pseudonym Lucas Cappe. He wrote over two dozen poems during his time in France. His parents published a collection of his pre-war and war poems under the title "A Subaltern’s Musings" in 1918.

Though some confront the horrors of war and some are humorous, Hamish Mann's war poems mainly question the nature of war and the lielihood of his own survival. They are disarmingly matter-of-fact and, had he lived, he might well have become a great poet.

Edward Tennant

1897-1916

Edward Wyndham Tennant was  the son of Baron Glenconner (also Edward Tennant) a Liberal politician and Pamela Wyndham, a writer. Nicknamed ‘Bim’  (or 'Bimbo'), he was educated at Winchester College, where he started to write poetry. At 17 he left school to live with a family in Germany and learn the language in preparation for the Diplomatic Service. 

When war broke out he joined the Grenadier Guards training in Bovington Camp, near Marlow in August 1915 . Later that month he was selected to go  to France, despite though Brigade Orders that no one should leave England before nineteen years of age.

He was killed by a sniper during the Battle of the Somme on 22nd September, 1916.

The poem "The Mad Soldier" was written three months before his death

Isaac Rosenberg

1890 - 1918

Isaac Rosenberg was brought up in Stepney a poor district of the East End of London with a large Jewish community. He attended Baker Street Board School where a good conduct award enabled him to take classes at the Arts and Crafts School in Stepney Green.

He  left school, at fourteen to start an apprenticeship with Carl Hentschel, a Fleet Street engraver. He became interested in both poetry and visual art and attended evening classes at Birkbeck College while saving to study art.  He left his apprenticeship in 1911 to study for two years at the Slade School of Fine Art where he studied alongside Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash (famous for his drawings of life in the trenches) and Dora Carrington.  

He exhibited work at the Whitechapel Art Gallery 1914 before ill health led him to travel to South Africa. Encouraged by Laurence Binyon, he had began writing poetry and had a pamphlet of ten poems published in 1912. When the war broke out he wrote a poem "On Receiving News of the War"  before returning home where he published a second volume. 

While many wrote of 'noble sacrifice', Rosenberg was critical rom the outset. In a letter he wrote, "I never joined the army for patriotic reasons. Nothing can justify war. I suppose we must all fight to get the trouble over."

However, unable to find permanent employment, Rosenberg enlisted in the army in October 1915 joining the 12th Bantam Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment. (A 'bantam' battalion was one composed of men of short height.) He continued to write poems from the Western Front, two were published by Poetry Magazine in late 1916. 

After several bouts of ill health and a failed attempt to join a Jewish regiment in Mesopotamia, he was transferred to the King's Own Royal Regiment (KORL) and joined the 'Spring Offensive' on the Western Front in March 1918. A week later he sent home his last poem from the war. Having just finished night patrol he was killed either by a sniper or in close combat.

Rosenberg and five KORL comrades were buried in a mass grave. In 1926, the unidentified remains of the six soldiers were individually re-interred at Bailleul Road East Cemetery, Saint-Laurent-Blangy. , His gravestone is marked with his name and the words, "Buried near this spot", as well as – "Artist and Poet". 

Rosenberg's "Poems from the Trenches" are recognized as some of the most outstanding poetry written during World War 1. Self portraits hand in both the National Portrait and Tate Britain galleries. Paul Fussell in "The Great War and Modern Memory" says Rosenberg's "Break of Day in the Trenches" as "the greatest poem of the war." . Rosenberg is one of the 16 WW1 poets memorialised on the stone in Poet's Corner Westminster Abbey.

Cyril Morton Horne

1886-1916

Like Tom Kettle and Francis Ledwidge, Cyril Morton Hall was an Irishman who chose to fight. Born in Dublin, he was a writer, poet and musical comedy performer appearing at the Prince of Wales Theatre, London and on Broadway New York.  He was married to fellow actor Marie Ditzen.

He had been in the army and been on the personal staffs of Kitchener in India [he commanded a unit of Sikhs in WW1] and the King before going on the stage. In January 1915 Horne sailed from the USA to join his old regiment and was commissioned as Captain in the 7th Battalion, King’s Own Scottish Borderers. During these the final year of his life he wrote a number of verses sent to his wife in America.

The preface to Songs of the Shrapnel Shell and Other Verses, published posthumously in 1916,  says many of the poems were written in the trenches, between attacks with shells “shrieking overhead, [and] mines and countermines exploding underneath"  He lived  for more than a year half-underground, like the moles in one of his poems,  with little hope of getting out alive. He wrote often scribbled in pencil upon scraps of paper, and sent them to the wife he had left behind.

Horne took over command of ‘A’ Company as one of the few officers to survive the first day of the Battle of Loos (25 September 1915) unharmed. He was killed on 27th January 1916 in Mazingarbe in France whilst trying to rescue a wounded soldier lying in front of the trench.  A shrapnel shell exploded overhead, killing both men.

Edward Thomas

1878 – 1917

Philip Edward Thomas was an essayist, novelist and poet. He was educated at Battersea Grammar School, St Paul’s School and Lincoln College Oxford. A fellow pupil at St Paul’s remembered him as serious and reserved, always with small animals and snakes in his pockets which he released inside his desk during school hours. The lifelong passion for nature and the country is the subject of his prose and poetry and makes him surprisingly relevant  to contemporary ecological concerns.

Thomas married his wife Helen while an undergraduate and worked as a book reviewer, reviewing up to 15 books every week.  

He was a widely published author, literary critic and biographer by the time the war began, famous for writing about the countryside which has led to the popular misconception of him as an 'English' poet when in fact he was Welsh. He published a successful novel in 1913, The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans .

He was a close friend of Welsh poet  W H Davies and was almost entirely responsible for his success just as another close friend, the American poet Robert Frost, was responsible for his. Though Thomas thought poetry the highest form of literature, he did not become a poet until the end of 1914 (and then under a pseudonym 'Edward Eastway').  Frost encouraged him to write poetry during long walks together. Frost's best known poem "The Road Not Taken" was inspired by tThomas's indecision about whether to write poetry.

Edward Thomas joined the Artists’ Rifles in July 1915  partially in response to Frost's poem which he took to be criticism. He was promoted first to corporal and the 2nd Lieutenant,  taking a commission in the Royal Artillery before going to France in early 1917. Asked by his friend the poet Eleanor Farjeon why he had joined up Thomas picked up some earth and crumbled it in his hand and  replied ‘Literally, for this.’

Thomas was killed in action on Easter Monday, April 9, 1917 soon after arriving at Arras. To spare his wife, she was told his death was bloodless resulting from the shock impact of a shell blast but a letter from his commanding officer found in the USA many years later confirmed he had been shot through the chest. 

Thomas is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Agny, France (Row C, Grave 43).

Edward Thomas is commonly thought of as a 'war poet' but few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. He is also widely thought of as an 'English Poet' because of his subject matter and having been born in London. However, his parents were both Welsh and Welsh speakers. Thomas wrote about Wales, [his only novel "The Happy Go-Lucky M0rgans" is about a Welsh family], was proud of his Welsh heritage and thought of himself as a Welsh poet. Some of his poems were written in "Cynghanedd" the 600 year old  (in 1914) traditional Welsh Bardic poetry ("The downs will lose the sun, white alyssum / Lose the bees’ hum") "Aspens", regarded as a an innovating poems, was written whilst on leave in 1915 and is an example of a Cynghanedd influenced poem.

Thomas would undoubtedly have gone on to be one of the greatest C20th poets. Ted Hughes considered him to be one of the founders of modern poetry and the "father of us all" He was admired by Walter de la Mare, Ivor Gurney and Eleanor Farjeon who was a friend of Edward and his wife Helen and probably in love with him. His poetry may well have influenced the Cynghanedd in Dylan Thomas's poetry and Dylan regularly talked of his poetry in public performances and broadcasts. The Caedmon series of recordings by Dylan includes him reading Thomas's poem "The Owl" [Dylan Thomas Reading Vol.4 Caedmon Literary Series TC1061 1957].

Edward Thomas is one of the 16 WW1 poets on the Westminster Abbey memorial in Poets Corner.  There is a memorial window to him in Steep Church and a stone memorial outside the village.

A study centre dedicated to his work is based in Petersfield Museum.

His widow Helen published two autobiographical accounts of her life with Edward Thomas. According to their daughter Myfanwy, her mother wrote encouraged by Eleanor Farjeon as a form of therapy to rid herself of the deep depression she suffered after his death. Throughout their marriage she was content to be the unassuming wife and mother of a great writer but her autobiography is a work of beautiful writing and deeply moving. Helen Thomas  was a full century ahead of her time in talking openly of her husbands bi-polar depression and disarmingly frank about their passionate sexual life.  They are published with some letters and reminiscences of her youngest daughter Myfanwy as "Under Storms Wing" by Carcanet. 

Wilfred Owen

1893 - 1918

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born in Oswestry, his family eventually moving to Shrewsbury. 

His family were evangelical Anglicans and initially Owen shared their faith with an ambition to enter the clergy.  His mother, to whom he was very close, detested smoking, drinking and the theatre and approved of poetry, watercolours and clergymen. 

He had a modest lower middle class upbringing and was educated at Birkenhead Institute, Shrewsbury Technical School and finally as a pupil-teacher in Wyle Coop School, Shrewsbury where he won a place at London University. Unable to afford the place without a scholarship, he worked as a lay assistant to a vicar near Reading and studied part-time at the university . 

During the early years of the war he lived in France teaching English and only returned to England in 1915 having first considered joining the French Army.

In October 1915, he enlisted in the Artists Rifles training in Essex before being  commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment. At the Front, he fell into a shell hole and suffered concussion and was later he was blown up by a trench mortar and unconscious for several days before being found. He was diagnosed as suffering from neurasthenia or shell shock and sent to Craiglockart where his  encounter with Sassoon would change his life.

Owen might have stayed on home-duty indefinitely but returned to active service in France in July 1918 seeing it his duty to add his voice to that of Sassoon telling the horrific realities of the war. Sassoon was vehemently opposed to the idea and Owen did not inform him until he was in France. A month later, he stormed an enemy post, possibly emulating Sassoon, and was awarded the Military Cross although his citation came after he was dead.

Wilfred Owen was killed one week almost to the hour before the Armistice. He was posthumously promoted to Lieutenant. The telegram announcing his death reached his mother shortly after the local church bells started to announce the end of the war. He is buried in Owen is buried at Ors Communal Cemetery, in northern France. The inscription on his gravestone, chosen by his mother, is based on a quote from his poetry: "Shall life renew these bodies? Of a truth all death will he annul"

Heavily influenced by Shelley and Keats, he is one of the greatest war poets. He was the first to experiment extensively with pararhyme and assonance. The influence of his mentor is now largely forgotten and Owen has eclipsed Sassoon as the most famous poet of the great war!

Though now often used to help veterans recover from PTSD, Owen was the first serviceman to be encouraged to use poetry as therapy. This and the advice given by his mentor at the time shaped and improved his poetry making it distinctive by softening Sassoon's realism and anger with the romanticism he absorbed from Keats and Shelley.

Although only five of his poems were  published before his death, Owen's posthumous success is due to the patronage of Sassoon, Edmund Blunden and Edith Sitwell. Sassoon, whom Owen idolised, also introduced him to prominent writer's of the day including H G Wells, Arnold Bennett, Robert Graves and Oscar Wilde's close friend Robbie Ross. 

There are memorials to Owen in Shrewsbury, Birkenhead, Oswestry, Ors and Gailly. He is among the 16 listed on the memorial in Westminster Abbey which bears his famous quote "My subject is war and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity"

Francis Ledwidge

1887-1917

WW1 was a political and moral dilemma for men in Ireland. For many, to fight for the British was to fight for the cause of the country who had enslaved them. Many were torn between their loyalty to Ireland and what they saw as a righteous fight. Ledwidge was such a man; a brilliant ‘farmer poet’ like his Welsh counterpart Hedd Wyn.

Francis Edward Ledwidge, known as "the poet of the blackbirds", was born into poverty, eighth of nine children. He left school at thirteen but continued educate himself working as a labourer, miner and shop assistant. He was a trade union activist and he was sacked for organising a strike against mining conditions in 1910. He was a patriot and nationalist. 

A keen poet, his poems were published in the Drogheda Independent newspaper when he was only 14. He would write on anything that came to hand, even gates and fence posts. At 25, he sent copies of his work to the writer Lord Dunsany who became his patron and found him a wider audience. 

Initially, Ledwidge was opposed to Irish involvement in the war but eventually enlisted in Lord Dunsany’s regiment on 14 October 1914 against the advice of his patron who offered him a salary so that he might concentrate on writing. It has been said that he enlisted following rejection by his sweetheart but Ledwidge stated that it was his conviction that to fight for Irish emancipation meant he had to fight for freedom. 

He was rapidly promoted to lance corporal and survived the huge losses sustained by his company at Gallipoli. Recovering from a back injury, his first book of poetry, "Songs of the Fields", was published in 1915. In May 1916  he was court-martialled and demoted for being drunk in uniform after the failure of the Easter Rising.. His rank was reinstated when he returned to the Front in January 1917. He was killed by a bomb while road-laying on July 31st 1917 the first day of Paaschendaele (the Third Battle of Ypres)  the same day as Hedd Wyn and is buried in the same cemetery, Artillery Wood Military Cemetery in Boezinge.

A second volume of his poetry, "Songs of Peace", was in preparation when he was killed and Lord Dunsany arranged for a third volume, "Last Songs", to be published after the war.

Ledwidge faded from the Irish school curriculum but has recently been revived. A memorial on the spot where he died was  erected in 1998

His childhood home in Slane, County Meath is now a Ledwidge museum

Hedd Wyn

1887 - 1917

Wales lost two of her finest modern poets in WW1, Hedd Wyn and Edward Thomas. 

Ellis Humphrey Evans wrote under the bardic pseudonym 'Hedd' Wyn (Pronounced 'Heth') meaning "beautiful peace" referencing both his religious pacifism and the morning mist of the hills of his home Trawsfynydd near Blaenau Ffestiniog in Snowdonia.  Like Robert Burns he was a "farmer poet". Despite limited formal education he became a well known and respected poet winning competitions in various Eistedfoddau. 

Evans was the eldest of eleven children born to a farming family, an unlikely prospect to become both a nationally recognised poet and hero. He is evidence of the depth to which poetry and song are the soul of Wales. At fourteen he started working on the family farm as a shepherd but had started writing poetry at the age of eleven.  

Welsh his first language, he wrote 'Cynghanedd' and 'Englynion' or 'Englyn', centuries old poetic traditions of Wales. Cynghanedd was already 600 hundred years old dating from the 13th century.  It was the 'bardic' poetry of the Eisteddfod. Complex and beautiful, the name means 'harmony' reflecting the musical way in which the poetry achieves its unique effect. Individual lines contain consonant harmony and internal rhyme. Consonant harmony is where two or more words in a line have the same or similar sounding consonants. Alliteration is an obvious example. Rhyme is common in poetry but is usually "end rhyme" where the word at the end of a line rhymes with that of one of the lines that follow. In Cynghanedd, two or more words within a single line rhyme with each other. This format is complicated and along with the metre and line structure of Cynghanedd make composing it difficult but the result worth the effort. The poetry has an intensity, impact and musicality that is profound and unique. In addition to countless Welsh bards, Edward Thomas (listed here) and the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins both wrote Cynhanedd poems, Hopkins learned Welsh just so he could write it. There is evidence of Cynghanedd in the poetry of Dylan Thomas though the how and why is subject to debate. Despite the long Welsh tradition of his poetry, Hedd Wyn was widely read and, like Wilfred Owen, heavily influenced by the Romantic poet Percy Shelley. 

Hedd Wyn  took part in numerous competitions winning his first bardic chair (Cadair y Bardd) at the age of 20  and four further chairs at the local eisteddfodau. He wrote his first poem for the National Eisteddfod of Wales in 1913 and took second place in 1916.  

The war divided Welsh non-conformists  in the same way it had split the Irish. Traditionally, they were opposed to war on grounds of faith and WW1 led to a bitter clash between those who backed military action and those who adopted a pacifist stance . Evans and his family took the radical pacifist view. Farming was a vital industry excusing men from enlisting.  As the eldest son of a farming family, he was exempt from military service after conscription was introduced in 1916 but the law required that, where a family had more than one son, one of them must join up. Despite his exemption and disregarding his Christian beliefs, Evans volunteered to enlist to prevent his younger brother from being conscripted. In the wake of Mametz Wood during the Somme in which the 38th Royal Welch Fusiliers were slaughtered by German machine guns, his self-sacrifice and his poetry made him a national hero. 

After training and, ironically, a period in which his unit were put to vital agricultural work, Hedd Wyn was sent to the Western Front preparing for the 3rd Battle of Ypres (Paaschendaele) in 1917. From there, he completed a series of poems which he submitted to the national Eisteddfod. Following initial resistance from his (English) commanding officer, under another pseudonym “Fleur Des Lys”, Hedd Wyn posted them just days before Paaschendaele began. 

Sent ‘over the top’ on the 31st of July 1917, during the Battle of Pilkem Ridge the first day of Paaschendaele; Hedd Wyn was hit in the stomach by a shell and died in a casualty clearing station a few hours later. He was 30 years old.

The results of the annual bardic competition were announced at the Eisteddfod in Birkenhead in front of the Prime Minister David Lloyd George who had reluctantly endorsed Paaschendaele. The winning name was read out several times inviting the new Bard to come forward until the Arch Druid announced that he had been killed six weeks earlier. A black cloth was draped over the bardic chair carved for the ceremony. It was carried like that to the Evans farm and has remained there to this day. 

With bitter irony, the chair was carved by Eugeen Vanfleteren a Flemish craftsman who had fled from Belgium on the outbreak of war and settled in Birkenhead. 

Ellis Humphrey Evans was buried in the Artillery Wood Cemetery with his Irish counterpart Francis Ledwidge. Following a petition, the IWGC  added the words 'Y Prifardd Hedd Wyn' ("The Chief Bard, Hedd Wyn"). 

Until recently a nephew of the poet, Gerald Williams, lived in the family cottage maintaining it in its original condition. The cottage was renovated to become the National Centre for Hedd Wyn and includes the bronze statue honouring the poet which was unveiled by his mother in 1923 which bears an Englyn written by Hedd Wyn in memory of a fallen friend Tommy Morris. 

His sacrifice was not in vain, his face
In our minds will remain,
Although he left a bloodstain
On Germany's iron fist of pain.

WW1 Postcard commemorating Hedd Wyn

Thomas (‘Tom’) Michael Kettle 

1880 – 1916

Irish economist, journalist, barrister, journalist, writer, poet, soldier and Home Rule MP and close friend of James Joyce. 

 Kettle was a leading figure in Irish party politics, and the movement for Home Rule; a gifted speaker, a sharp intellectual and noted wit. His death was seen as a loss to Ireland's political and intellectual life, G K Chesterton called him  “the greatest example of that greatness of spirit which was so ill rewarded on both sides of the channel …. He was a wit, a scholar, an orator, a man ambitious in all the arts of peace; and he fell fighting the barbarians because he was too good a European to use the barbarians against England, as England a hundred years before has used the barbarians against Ireland"

Born in Dublin, the seventh of twelve children, he excelled at school and university with a reputation as a wit, debater, sportsman and in foreign languages after which he qualified as a barrister but devoted his time to political journalism. 

independence and pro-European stance saying,. “My only counsel to Ireland is, that to become deeply Irish, she must become European."

Kettle became the first Professor of National Economics at UCD whilst still working as an MP. In 909 he married Mary Sheehy, a fellow graduate and suffragist (note not Suffragette) who had been the muse of the adolescent James Joyce and is the model for the lead female character in Joyce's story  'Araby' and Miss Ivors in 'The Dead' in his collection "The Dubliners" from the same collection

Unlike others of his class, he supported the 1913 Dublin Strike, publishing articles about the terrible living and working conditions of the Dublin poor, and worked to negotiate a settlement between workers and employers. 

He was in Belgium purchasing arms for the Irish Volunteers when war broke out becoming a war correspondent witnessing the mistreatment of Belgian civilians which led him to return home and accept a commission in the army.

Tom Kettle was killed in action with 'B' Company of the 9th Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during a ‘tempest of fire’ on 9 September 1916, during the Somme Offensive. Surviving an initial blow, he was struck again and killed outright. He was 36 years old. He was buried ion the battlefield by the Welsh Guards and the grave was subsequently lost. His name is on the monumental gateway for the Somme missing at Thiepval.

The following tribute to him appeared in the French journal L'Opinion at the time of his death

“All parties bowed in sorrow over his grave, for in the last analysis they were all Irish, and they knew that in losing him, whether he was friend or enemy, they had lost a true son of Ireland. A son of Ireland? He was more. He was Ireland! He had fought for all the aspirations of his race, for Independence, for Home Rule, for the Celtic Renaissance, for a United Ireland, for the eternal Cause of Humanity . . . He died, a hero in the uniform of a British soldier, because he knew that the faults of a period or of a man should not prevail against the cause of right or liberty.”