war poetry - how did it get published?

[GraceAnais]

hey guys, i'm an english teacher and i'm doing war poetry with my year 8 this term one question they asked was how the poets got the poems back to britain to be published, especially considering the post back home was censored and many died on the field. in the case of Wilfred Owen who died in battle; who found his poems? would all of his belongings have been sent back to his parents after his death? this completly stumped me and i promised them i'd find out. any ideas.

[Barmaid]

I don't know anything about how Wilfred Owen's poems came to light but I do know that my great great uncle served (and was killed) in France. One of his friends wrote poetry (unpublished) and he sent a couple of them home to my grandmother (who now jealously guards them!), there were also a couple which he had been given in his personal effects when he was killed. Clearly the censors found nothing untoward in them!

How I wish we had been able to look at the war poets at school. Lucky year 8!!!

[dot.hawkes]

Rupert Brook wrote his war sonnets whilst on leave in Dec 1914
Edward Thomas wrote his at the same time and only enlisted in July 1915
Siegfried Sassoon wrote his first war poems whilst invalided back to London in April 1917 and again after the end of the war he carried on writing his war poems
Ivor Gurney wrote his after being committed to an asylum after the war and in a 15 year period of hospitalisation and institutionalisation mixed with a return to study music/
Issac Rosenberg wrote poetry before the war and enlisted in 1915, like Ivor Gurney he served in the ranks and had a working class background and he may well have written whilst on active duty. he was killed in action in 1918

Wilfred own met sassoon in Edinburgh hospital in 1917 and wrote his poems there, he returned to the front and was killed a week before the end of the war in 1918

so apart from one, they all wrote their works pretty much whilst in England or Scotland recuperating.

[LazyGun]

I can still remember hearing Wilfred Owens poetry for the first time whilst in school, and the sheer power of the imagery in conjured up.

[Cetti]

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon was born in 1869 and in his forties when he wrote "For The Fallen". Too old to see military service but served with the Red Cross on the Western front. He wrote his most famous poem in 1916 after the Battle of Loos. A playwright, art historian as well as lecturering at home and abroad after the end of the war and died in 1946.

[Lonnie]

My father wrote a Diary during the war, at the back are poems he wrote after each action, about the countries, towns and people.

It was illegal for soldiers to write diaries at that time, but I suspect that that's how quite a few got their poems back, smuggled and illegal, but they would be accepted as historical records now.

[RogK]

Can't help with the original question, I'm afraid, but it's a fascinating thread.

[GraceAnais]

thanks guys for all your help. i have year 8 tomorrow so i will inform them of this.
it is brilliant being able to teach war poetry and the kids absolutely love it, especially at this level where they are not bogged down by exams and grades and can just simply enjoy learning it. they also love the history behind it and it is nice that we get to look at the emotional/social side of war as opposed to the political part that is normally studied in history.
what with 11th november coming up it's nice to think that it may mean more to my year 8s than simply wearing a paper poppy. it;s the old adage; 'those that forget history are condemned to repeat it.'

although T.Blair and the powers that be would not agree, it is this part of the education system that enriches kids more than the achievement of 5 A-Cs at GCSE.