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Wilfred Owen Wilfred Owen Early Life Wilfred Owen was born on the 18th of March 1893 in Shropshire, however he later moved to Birkenhead. His father was a station master and unlike many if not all of the other famous war poets he did not not go to a fee-paying school. He was a devout Anglican ( this influenced many of his works ). He started writing poetry in his teens, however when he started teaching both in France and the UK, he started to properly work on his poems - which he modelled on one of his poetry idols John Keats, especially the rhyming patterns, which are now a key indicator of his works. His time teaching and tutoring is when his love of poetry blossomed. What he stood for and accomplished His time in WW1 was the most influential experience in his life and influenced all of this poetry. Owen enlisted in 1915 and in 1916 was sent to France to fight in the Battle of the Somme. This was where Owen was forced to wade through a metre of muddy water in the midst of gun fire with the constant threat of gas attacks. That experience formed the basis of many poems such as ‘Exposure’ and ‘Dulce et Decorum est Pro Patria Mori’. The letters he sent to his mother during this time recall the horrific situations that the soldiers had to endure. Overall Owen was a conscientious objector, because of his religious upbringing, this was brought up in many of his poems as he did not agree with the mass propaganda production in the UK and he saw the lives of many young men lost because they thought joining the war effort was a way to prove their masculinity and if they did not join they would be seen as a coward. This series of thoughts prompted the writing of the work ‘The anthem for doomed youth’. However, during the war Owen raised up the ranks quickly, eventually becoming a Lieutenant. In April of 1917 Owen was blown into the air by a shell, and spent the next few days in a hole, in the dark with the corpse of a fellow officer - it was then he was diagnosed with shell shock and was sent to a hospital in Edinburgh. It was here he met Siegfried Sassoon ( more details of the meeting down below ). At the hospital is where he had the time to actually write his poetry as well as becoming chief editor of the hospital magazine ‘Hydra’. In the Spring of 1918, Owen went back to war and wrote poems such as ‘Futility’ - there was a change in style at this point as he started to use pararhymes which created a more solemn tone to his writing. Death and How his memory lives on In September 1918, Wilfred Owen returned to the front lines - he was awarded a Military Cross for his bravery. However, sadly, he was killed leading his men across No Mans Land, on November 4th, just a week before Armistice and the war ending. What was especially sad is that his family got the news of his death on the same day as the Armistice. However, his memory lives on today as one of Britain's greatest war poets. Not only do we learn about his work in schools across the country, there are multiple plaques and memorials dedicated to him and his work. Relationship with Siegfried Sassoon In June 1917 when Owen went to the Edinburgh Hospital with shell shock, that was when he met Siegfried Sasson - who was also at the hospital. Sassoon was already a big name in the poetry industry and it took two weeks for Owen to knock on his door. Sassoon recognised the talent in Owen and without that recognition we may have never seen many of the classic war poems we have today. They both shared the same ideology - that the war should be stopped. Sassoons contacts let Owen into the world of poetry, and Owen was helped to get in touch with many of his idols because of Sasson ( such as Robert Graves and Thomas Hardy ). They both sat together writing poetry and drafting and redrafting each other's work. A close bond was formed between the two. For a while after meeting Sassoon, Owen's writing style was incredibly similar to Sassoons , dry and satirical, but after Owen became a bigger name he went back into his older writing style with his characters being more full and realistic. Siegfried Sassoon Early Life Siegfried Sassoon was born on the 8th of September 1886. He was born to David Sassoon, son of a wealthy merchant family, however because he married a non-jew, Siegfrieds father was disowned. Although his mother came from a long line of famous artists and sculptors and her family were very well known and well off. Sassoon lived very comfortably, going to outstanding public schools and then Cambridge University - although he never finished his degree - he dropped out of university - spending the last year of his degree perfecting his poetry and playing cricket and fox-hunting. He was supported financially by a huge inheritance left to him by his aunt. During 1906 to 1916 he published many slim volumes, including the well known Daffodil Murderer which won the Chantrey Prize. What he stood for and accomplished Sassoon enlisted in 1915, first serving with the Welsh fusiliers, which were sent to fight in France ( where he met Robert Graves and they became close ) After he was caught in heavy crossfire and bringing a wounded soldier back to the trenches he got a Military Cross. However, this ordeal changed Sassoon’s mindset, he became a conscientious objector and he decided he did not want to fight in the war anymore and sent a letter of protest to the House of Commons. In response to this unpatriotic letter, many politicians wanted Sassoon to be court marshalled ( as many believed he was breaking military law by sending this letter ) - this was stopped by Graves, as Graves claimed Sassoon had shell-shock. Sassoon was then sent to an Edinburgh Hospital where he met Wilfred Owen (more about that encounter above). In 1918, Sassoon was discharged from hospital and sent to fight in the war again. Unsurprisingly, he was promoted to Lieutenant as throughout his war career he had many outstanding moments, including the singlehanded capture of a german trench with a grenade. Many soldiers thought he was so fearless that they only felt safe when they were with him. However as he got more and more overcome by the death of his comrades, he sent his men into near-suicidal missions, such as night raids and bombing patrols - gaining him the nickname ‘Mad Jack’. Near the end of the war, Sassoon got injured again and again and had multiple spells in hospital for minor injuries. These hospital visits were where Sassoon wrote most of his most famous poems such as the collection, ‘War Poems by Siegfried Sassoon’. Post-war life Once the war ended, Sassoon got involved in Labour Party politics as well as lecturing about pacifism and continuing to write. He took up the post of the literary editor in the ‘Daily Herald’ but also continued to write his autobiographical prose ‘The memoirs of George Shershton’ detailing his life as a soldier - with little changed but the names. Some argue that his prose is his best work. As his lectures got more popular, he went on a global tour across America and Europe. In 1933 Sasson married and in 1936 Sassoon had a child - something which he apparently craved for. However as many other poets of the time, although homosexuality was illegal Sassoon was famous for having affairs with men very high up in society ( including Princes ). Another major crisis for Sasson was his religious identity. Although his father was a jew and he had grown up with the presence of his mothers catholic family. After having a long pause to think about religion, which affected many of his works, Sassoon decided to become a catholic. Although he was also interested in the supernatural and became a member of the ghost club in which many famous artists and writers were also a member of ( such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ). .
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