War Poets

This project is dedicated to poets who wrote about the experience of war. The object is to assemble war poets of all periods and nationalities, with a primary focus on conflicts since 1914 – mainly the First World War, Spanish War 1936-39, Second World War and Ireland.

Poets have written about the experience of war since the Greeks, but the young soldier poets of the First World War established war poetry as a literary genre. Their combined voice has become one of the defining texts of Twentieth Century Europe.

In 1914 hundreds of young men in uniform took to writing poetry as a way of expressing their emotions and experiences.

Although ‘war poet’ tends traditionally to refer to active combatants, war poetry has been written by many ‘civilians’ caught up in conflict in other ways: Cesar Vallejo and WH Auden in the Spanish Civil War, Margaret Postgate Cole and Rose Macaulay in the First World War, James Fenton in Cambodia.

War poetry is not necessarily ‘anti-war’. It is often about identity, innocence, guilt, loyalty, courage, compassion, humanity, duty, desire, death. Its response to these questions.

"War poetry is currently studied in every school in Britain. It has become part of the mythology of nationhood, and an expression of both historical consciousness and political conscience. The way we read – and perhaps revere – war poetry, says something about what we are, and what we want to be, as a nation." http://www.warpoets.org/

Please add the names of War Poets to to the list below. If the person has a profile on Geni please link them to the project and add their link in bold.

See also the following GENi projects

• Working with Projects
• Working with projects - Step by Step

9 Poets of the First World War at Im,perial War Museum]

A

• Richard Aldington (1892-1962)
• Herbert Asquith (1881-1947)

B

• Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (1870-1953)
• Keith Barnes (1934 – 1969)
• Robert Laurence Binyon
• Edmund Blunden (1896 – 1974)
• Vera Mary Brittain (1893-1970)
• Rupert Chawner Brooke (1887 – 1915)

C

• [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Wedderburn_Cannan May Wedderburn Cannan (1893-1973) a British poet who was active in World War I.
• Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) better known as G. K. Chesterton (In Wiki list of War Poets)
• John Crommelin-Brown (1888-1953)
• Timothy Corsellis (1921–1941)
• Leslie Coulson (1889 – 1916)

D

• Jeffery Day (1896-1918) was an English war poet, killed in an air battle towards the end of World War I over the sea.
• Geoffrey Dearmer (1893-1996)
• Walter John de la Mare, OM, CH (25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) was an English poet, short story writer and novelist.(In Wiki list of War Poets)
• Eva Dobell (1876–1963) was a British poet, nurse, and editor, best known for her poems on the effects of World War I and her regional poems. She was the niece of Sydney Dobell - Victorian Poet.
• William Arthur Dunkerley (12 November 1852 - 23 January 1941) a.k.a. John Oxenham

E

F

• Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)
• Gilbert Frankau (1884-1952)

G

• Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878 – 1962)
• Robert von Ranke Graves (1895 – 1985)
• Julian Grenfell (1888 – 1915)
• Ivor Bertie Gurney (28 August 1890 – 26 December 1937) was an English composer and poet.

H

• Thomas Hardy 1840-1928) Nine of Hardy's war poems are to be found in both Minds at War and Out in the Dark.
• Carl Gottlieb Hinkel (1793-1817)
• William Noel Hodgson (1893-1916)
• Homer
• T.E. Hulme (1883 – 1917)

I

J

• John Jarmain (1911 – 1944)
• David Jones (1895 – 1974)

K

• Sidney Keyes (1922 – 1943)
• Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) In Minds at War there are six of his war poems, plus an extract from A Song of the English. In Out in the Dark there are four full poems and two extracts.
• Louis Arthur Klemantaski, 2nd Lt. (1819-1916)

L

• Philip Arthur Larkin, CH, CBE, FRSL (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985)
• Alun Lewis (1915 – 1944)
• Michael Longley (1939 – )

M

• Ewart Alan Mackintosh, MC (1893-1917)
• John Masefield (1878 – 1967)
• John McCrae (1872-1918)
• Moina Michael (1869-1944) U.S. professor and humanitarian who conceived the idea of using poppies as a symbol of remembrance for those who served in World War I.
• Harold Monro (1879 – 1932)

N

• Sir Henry Newbolt, CH (1862 – 1938)
• Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols (6 or 16 September 1893–17 December 1944) was an English writer, known as a war poet of World War I, and a playwright.
• General Maresuke Nogi (1849 – 1912)

O

• Wilfred Edward Salter Owen (1893 – 1918)
• John Oxenham - see William Arthur Dunkerley (12 November 1852 - 23 January 1941)

P

• Jessie Pope (1868-1941)

Q

R

• Herbert Edward Read (1893-1968)
• Isaac Rosenberg (1890 – 1918)

S

• Siegfried Sassoon (1886 – 1967)
• Vernon Scannell (1922 – 2007)
• Sir Owen Seaman 1st baronet (1861-1936) British writer, journalist and poet. He is best known as editor of Punch, from 1906 to 1932.
• Alan Seeger (1888-1916)
• Charles Hamilton Sorley (19 May 1895 – 13 October 1915) was a British poet of World War I.
• John William Streets, better known as Will Streets (24 March 1886 – 1 July 1916) was an English soldier and poet of the First World War
• Muriel Stuart (1885-1967)

T

• Edward Thomas (1878 – 1917)
• Georg Trakl (1887 – 1914)
• Katharine Tynan (23 January 1859 – 2 April 1931)

U

V

W

• Arthur Graeme West (1891 – 1917)

Related Projects on Geni

References and Sources

• http://www.warpoets.org/

this project is in HistoryLink