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Intro to WW1 Poetry: Wilfred Owen

Biography

Owen was born on 18th March 1893 in Oswestry, Shropshire, son of Tom and Susan Owen. After the death of his grandfather in 1897 the family moved to Birkenhead (Merseyside).

His education began at the Birkenhead Institute, and then continued at the Technical School in Shrewsbury when the family were forced to move there in 1906-7 when his father was appointed Assistant Superintendent of the London and North Western and Great Western Joint Railways. Already displaying a keen interest in the arts, Owen's earliest experiments in poetry began at the age of 17. After failing to attain entrance to the University of London, he spent a year as a lay assistant to the Revd. Herbert Wigan at Dunsden before leaving for Bordeaux, France, to teach at the Berlitz School of English.

During the latter part of 1914 and early 1915 Owen became increasingly aware of the magnitude of the War and he returned to England in September 1915 to enlist in the Artists' Rifles a month later. He received his commission to the Manchester Regiment (5th Battalion) in June 1916, and spent the rest of the year training in England.

1917 in many ways was the pivotal year in his life, although it was to prove to be his penultimate. In January he was posted to France and saw his first action in which he and his men were forced to hold a flooded dug-out in no-man's land for fifty hours whilst under heavy bombardment. In March he was injured with concussion but returned to the front-line in April. In May he was caught in a shell-explosion and when his battalion was eventually relieved he was diagnosed as having shell-shock ('neurasthenia'). He was evacuated to England and on June 26th he arrived at Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh.

Had Owen not arrived at the hospital at that time one wonders what might have happened to his literary career, for it was here that he met Siegfried Sassoon who was also a patient. Sassoon already had a reputation as a poet and after an awkward introduction he agreed to look over Owen's poems. As well as encouraging Owen to continue, he introduced him to such literary figures as Robert Graves (a friend of Sassoon's) which in turn, after his release from hospital, allowed Owen to mix with such luminaries as Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells.

Notes

  • Craiglockhart Hospital
    • The large victorian building at Craiglockhart was requisitioned by the military in 1916 and turned into a war hospital for the treatment of shell shocked officers. In 1917, Wilfred Owen was sent to Craiglockhart to recover from "Neurasthenia" (a more scientific term for "shell shock"). At around the same time as this, Siegfried Sassoon was sent there after having his Declaration against the War read out in the House of Commons, his friend and fellow poet Robert Graves having convinced the review board that Sassoon was suffering from shell-shock (although he clearly wasn't), thus avoiding a Court Martial.
    • Owen met Sassoon at Craiglockhart in August 1917 and was strongly influenced and encouraged by him. Also, the work of the doctors at Craiglockhart was ground-breaking for the time and the friendship between Sassoon and his Doctor, Dr. W.H.R. Rivers was to become life long — a fictionalised account of the beginning of this relationship is documented in Pat Barker's novel Regeneration (Penguin, 1992), soon to be released as a motion picture.
    • Napier University War Poets Collection (at Craiglockhart)

  • Wilfred Owen: Ors & the Sambre Canal

    • On 4th November 1918, the British 32nd Division crossed the Sambre-Oise canal here, at Ors, in the face of strong opposition. During the assault four VCs were won, among the casualties was the poet, Lieutenant Wilfred Owen MC 2nd Battalion Manchester Regiment, who was killed on the towpath on this side of the canal about one kilometre to the north of the bridge.