Guest 683- Registered: 11 Feb 2009
- Posts: 1,052
#1
Following on from the Front Page posting this has some more information on what looks like a very impressive, and moving, memorial:
http://gofrance.about.com/od/nordpasdecalais/a/The-Wilfred-Owen-Memorial.htm
I will have to add it to my list of places to visit being an admirer of Owen's work and his views on warfare and being increasingly drawn to the First World War.
Guest 640- Registered: 21 Apr 2007
- Posts: 7,819
#2
Good feature there Mark.Thanks for the link. Excellent the way the French have honoured this great poet of ours, in a quiet village few of us have heard of. Im sure some of the lads on here like Alan and Brian who visit these places in France, battlefields and so on, will find this interesting. Would be keen to go there myself now at some juncture. On my own previous meagre travels in France have seen much war evidence even though I wasnt looking for it. Often stops you in your tracks..quite sobering to think of the awful stuff that went on amongst the civilised of Europe.
#3
It's so important to remember in order to learn from that terrible experience. It made me think the other day when I realised that for my children, WWII is even further behind them that WWI was for my generation. There are kids who don't even know whe it started - which is of course the fault of the education system as much as anything but don't get me started! But it is sobering that it is so remote and forgotten for many. Which is why we need to maintain the respect, the remembrance and the learning.
#4
Thank you Mark will be going in November before going to Belgium for Remembrance Day.
The eldest son of a railway clerk, Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born in Oswestry in 1893 and grew up in Birkenhead and Shrewsbury. An early interest in poetry was encouraged by his ambitious and possesive mother who was a devout evangelical Anglican (his father was disappointed that Wilfred did not seem likely to take up a trade), and he absorbed the works of Shakespeare and Romantic poets such as Keats, before starting to write poetry himself.
When, in 1912, Wilfred failed to win a scolarship to London University he became an unpaid lay assistant in the parish of Dunsden near Reading. Sadly, he did not receive the tuition he had hoped would enable him to make a second attempt at winning a scholarship; and it wasn't long before he resigned his post and rejected his orthodox beliefs.
In 1913 he travelled to Bordeaux and took a poorly paid job teaching English in the Berlitz School. This led to a private tutoring post in the Pyranees, where he met the poet Laurent Tailhade who encouraged him to continue writing. When war was declared he was indecisive about returning to England because of the supposed dangers of crossing the Channel during wartime.
However, he eventually made his way back in September 1915 and promptly enlisted in the Artists' Rifles, where he met Harold Monro, in whose Poetry Bookshop Wilfred spent many happy hours (he also took lodgings there); and some months after being comissioned in the Manchester Regiment, Wilfred was shipped over to France, where in early 1917 he joined the 2nd Manchesters on the Somme.
Trench warfare affected Wilfred and his poetry profoundly. Upon arrival, one of his first tasks was to hold a dugout in No-Man's-Land (an ordeal he described in his poems The Sentry and Exposure) - this and experiences like it hardened up his poetry and injected it with realism. He took as his subject the 'the pity of War' and began to write about the harsh conditions and suffering of the individual soldier, often with homoerotic intensity. It was at about this time that he wrote, "Above all I am not concerned with poetry. My subject is war, and the pity of war. The Poetry is in the pity... All the Poet can do is warn. That is why true poets must be truthful."
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
#5
interesting piece from alan, will try to make the journey myself.
always found his poetry very moving.
Guest 683- Registered: 11 Feb 2009
- Posts: 1,052
#6
There is added poignancy in the story that tells how Wilfred Owen's mother received the news of his death as the church bells were pealing for the armistice.
Guest 663- Registered: 20 Mar 2008
- Posts: 1,136
#7
That is a very moving story about Wilfred Owen's and as PaulB has said would like to see it at some point, there are many of these Memrioals across France, I have documentation of my own Grandfathers bravery in Arras and the surounding area.
great piece of imformation there Alan on the the man himself.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
#8
if i remember rightly i put a couple of poems willfred owen on the forum in the last few months.