{\b Wilfred Owen}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 1893

{\b Date of Death}.: 1918

{\b Works}.

English poet. Now considered as one of the finest English 'war poets', he 
remained relatively unknown until an edition of his poems was published in 
1931 with a Memoir in by  Edmund Blunden. Previously his poetry had been 
collected and published in 1920 by Owen's friend, the poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Most of his work was produced between the years 1915 and 1918 and detailed his 
horrific experiences in the trenches during World War I. 'The Collected Poems' 
were published in 1963 and were chosen by the composer Britten for his 'War 
Requiem'.

Other 'war poets' include Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon.

{\b Featured Works}.

'Strange Meeting', 'Insensibility', 'The Roads Also', 'Sonnet: To a Child', 
'Winter Song', 'Dulce et Decorum Est', 'Shadwell Stair', 'The Young Soldier', 
'Anthem for Doomed Youth', 'Greater Love', 'To Eros', 'Futility', 'Arms and the 
Boy', 'Asleep', 'At a Calvary near the Ancre', 'Hospital Barge at Cerisy', 'The 
Dead Beat', 'Disabled', 'Exposure', 'Mental Cases', 'Miners', 'Parable of the Old 
Man and the Young', 'The Send-Off', 'The Sentry', 'Spring Offensive', 'A Terre'.

{\b General Comment}.

Wilfred Owen was born near Oswestry, Shropshire, where his father worked on 
the railway. He was educated at the Birkenhead Institute, Liverpool and 
Shrewsbury Technical College. He worked as a pupil-teacher in a poor country 
parish before a shortage of money forced him to drop his hopes of studying at 
the University of London and take up a teaching post in Bordeaux (1913). 
He was tutoring in the Pyrenees when war was declared and enlisted as shortly 
afterwards.

In 1917 he suffered severe concussion and 'trench-fever' whilst fighting on 
the Somme and spent a period recuperating at Craiglockart War Hospital, near 
Edinburgh. It was he that he met Siegfried Sassoon who read his poems, 
suggested how they might be improved, and offered him much encouragement.

He was posted back to France in 1918 where he won the MC before being killed 
on the Sombre Canal a week before the Armistice was signed.

His poetry owes its beauty to a deep ingrained sense of compassion coupled 
with grim realism. Owen is also acknowledged as a technically accomplished 
poet and master of metrical variety.

Poems such as 'Dulce Decorum Est' and 'Anthem for doomed Youth' have done much 
to influence our attitudes towards war.