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Poetry Sunday: Wilfred Owen

Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library / Alamy Stock Photo

In honor of Veterans Day, Gregory Williams reads World War I poet Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est." 

 

 

Gregory Williams is a retired judge and student of British history and literature from Marstons Mills.

Wilfred Owen, who wrote some of the best British poetry on World War I, composed nearly all of his poems in slightly over a year, from August 1917 to September 1918. In November 1918 he was killed in action at the age of twenty-five, one week before the Armistice. Only five poems were published in his lifetime—three in the Nation and two that appeared anonymously in the Hydra, a journal he edited in 1917 when he was a patient at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. For more on Owen, visit the Poetry Foundation website.