WWI Poetry

You're now experts on life at the Front in World War 1 - you've written an imaginative journal from the point of view of a junior officer serving at the Western Front. Now we shall focus on a poem written by a poet who actually fought during WWI - Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et decorum est'.

This lesson I gave you a little bit of information about Wilfred Owen:

• Wilfred Owen 1893-1918


• He wanted to make ordinary civilians back home understand the realities of trench-warfare. He wrote about the horrors faced by soldiers fighting in the war.


• He did not want to write about the honour and glory of fighting for one's country, the truth of the war for him was in the suffering of the soldiers and his pity for them.


• In a letter he wrote “My subject is war and the pity of war”.


• He was killed in action during a dawn attack on 4/11/1918 - just one week before the end of the war.

I also told you a little bit about the poem "Dulce et decorum est", explaining that the title refers to a poem written by the Roman poet Horace that was published in about 23BCE. The last lines of the poem are:

"The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori"

Translated from the Latin these lines mean 'How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country'.

As you can see from this image of the original manuscript the poem is dedicated to 'Jessie Pope etc.' - Jessie Pope being the name of a famous propagandist at the time who was ardent in her support of the war and who fervently urged men to join up and fight. This dedication is ironic since Owen himself disagreed with Pope's beliefs.

For Owen it was important that the"old lie" that it was good to die fighting for your country ha to be destroyed. He believed that civilians had to be told of the realities of war, that it was a dirty and painful business and that rather than being "glorious" death in battle was actually horrific and painful. In "Dulce et decorum est" he uses graphic imagery to convey the realities of war to his readers back home who would have been encouraging their sons/husbands/brothers to join up and fight.