WWI poet (b. 1893 - d. 1918) who threw down about a war better than most. He's my favorite war poet, and he grabs the terror of battle so well it chills my spine. Think Saving Private Ryan as poesy.

Owen was born in Oswestry, United Kingdom. He was a tutor of English to a wealthy French family at the outbreak of WWI. After a visit to a war hospital in 1915, he enlisted in the English army. He was sent to France in the winter of 1917 and spent four months fighting in some of the most bloody battles the world has ever seen. In early 1918 Owen was severely injured in battle and sent back to England.

In August of 1918 after several months in a hospital Owen returned to the front. He was killed charging a machine gun nest on November 4, 1918 -- seven days before the end of the war. The military action in which he was lost was later described as "a pointless bloody mess" by a British general.

Selected Titles:

"The Parable of the Old Man and the Young"
"Strange Meeting"
"On Seeing a Piece of Our Heavy Artillery Brought into Action"
"Futility"
"At a Calvary Near the Ancre"
"Greater Love"
"Dulce et Decorum Est"
"Anthem for Doomed Youth"

Wilfred Owen

• Teacher
• War poet
• Served on the Western Front and in the Battle of the Somme
• Famed for realistic war portrayals

On the 18th of March, 1883, Wilfred Owen was born to a railway worker in Plas Wilmot, near Oswestry. He was educated at Birkenhead Institute and Shrewsbury Technical School. He then worked as a pupil-teacher at Wyle Cop School, during his preparation for sitting his matriculation exam for the University of London. However, he did not get a scholarship, so he worked as a English teacher in the Berlitz School is Bordeaux.

He had always thought of himself as a pacifist, but in October 1915 he helped out the war effort by joining in the Artists' Rifles. Commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, in January 1917, he joined the Manchester Regiment, during his time in France. He began, during this period, to write poetry.

In the summer of 1917, during the Battle of the Somme, Wilfred Owen got a bad case of concussion after a shell landed less than two metres away from him. He spent several days in a bomb crater with the mangled corpse of a fellow officer, and was (funnily enough) diagnosed with shell-shock.

He met the war poet Siegfried Sassoon whilst recovering in Craiglockhart War Hospital, and Sassoon advised and encouraged Owen, as did Robert Graves, another poet at the hospital. Sassoon advised Owen that he should write in a direct and colloquial style. Over the next few months, Owen wrote many poems, including Anthem for Doomed Youth and Dulce et Decorum Est.

Sassoon had a big effect on Owen, and also introduced him to H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennett, who helped him to be published in 'The Nation'.

In the August of 1918, Owen returned to the Western Front, and to duty. He served at Beaurevoir-Fousomme, and was awarded the Military Cross. On November 4, 1918, Wilfred Owen was cut down by machine gun fire whilst leading men across the Sambre Canal. Only a week after this (11am, 11/11/1918), the Armistice was signed.

Five of Wilfred Owen's poems were published while he was alive. Siegfried Sassoon published the rest of Owen's works in 1920, in 'Collected Poems'.

Wilfred Owen was not a romantic war poet, and this is why his poetry is so gripping. He told war as it was and still is - brutal and horrifying.

Sources:

1. www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
2. The Hutchinson Encyclopedia