Poetry in World War One

Jack Sullivan, Butetown History & Arts Centre

After the war poets needed something to write about. Many of them chose WWI as a topic because of its impact on the world.

The poems had a wide variety of topics from battles, to the horrors of war, to its weapons and participants. In “The Bombardment” the poet Amy Lowell describes an artillery bombardment. during which many valuable things are broken or destroyed.

Another poem depicts a soldier as he thinks about how fortunate he was to be alive and well. These thoughts of his were stirred when he heard an owl, whose cry reminded him of how fortunate he was not to be dead while so many others were not. The title of the poem is “The Owl.”

The charges made by the men in the trenches against other trenches were almost pointless. The introduction of machine guns and the wreckage of no-mans land made such attacks costly and largely ineffective. In “Attack” an attack is described, and the author wishes it to stop due to its brutality and waste.

Because of the new type warfare introduced in WWI poets found a great wealth of topics and ideas to write about. Many poems were written by soldiers themselves, while others were written by poets who imagined what life was like as a soldier. The poems of and about WWI give an idea of how warfare was changing in that time to modern day.