Oren became better known after his death in 1920, when Sassoon wrote the introduction to poems. He was a well-known poet during the 20s, but he's well-known possibly within the world of poets and reviewers rather than the wider public. But again, with the disabled, it was a poem I almost could not read during COVID and lockdown because of its final lines which speak anywhere and to any time how cold and late it is.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the celebrated British poet of World War One. Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) had published only a handful of poems when he was killed a week before the end of the war, but in later decades he became seen as the essential British war poet. His works such as Anthem for Doomed Youth, Strange Meeting and Dulce et Decorum Est went on to be inseparable from the memory of the war and its futility. However, while Owen is best known for his poetry of the trenches, his letters offer a more nuanced insight into him such as his pride in being an officer in charge of others and in being a soldier who fought alongside his comrades.
With
Jane Potter
Reader in The School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University
Fran Brearton
Professor of Modern Poetry at Queen’s University Belfast
And
Guy Cuthbertson
Professor of British Literature and Culture at Liverpool Hope University
Producer: Simon Tillotson