Facts about the war poets and their poetry, as well as other links between poetry and war
1. The link between poppies and war remembrance dates from the Napoleonic wars, when a writer noted that they flourished over soldiers’ graves. The association would be popularised during the First World War, especially by John McCrae’s poem ‘In Flanders Fields‘ in 1915.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Futility’ was one of just five poems by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) that were published before his death, aged 25, on 4 November 1918. Like all of his best-known work it’s a war poem, a brief lyric that focuses on a group of soldiers standing over the dead body of a fallen comrade. Below is Owen’s ‘Futility’ followed by a brief analysis of some of its linguistic features and its imagery.