Where are the war poets? - Defence Academy of the United Kingdom

y war. The challenge is firstly to understand why that is so and then to determine whether it
deserves greater public exposure and support.
SCOPE
Taking Cecil Day Lewis’ 1943 poem, ‘Where are the war poets’, as a title for this dissertation is
perhaps disingenuous, given that his poem was a cynical retort to the media of his time, who had
called on British poets to extol the virtues and the justice of a war for national survival. 7 However,
the fundamental question, that the title poses, remains valid today. This dissertation will therefore
address the role and place of today’s British war poetry. Following a short contextual section on the
definitions and evolution of war poetry, the dissertation unpacks its title by addressing fundamental
questions along the lines of: What constitutes contemporary British war poetry Who is writing it
What are the roles of war poetry And is poetry relevant in the twenty-first century It will then
offer broad conclusions to support a proposition that, despite its low profile, today’s British war
poetry must be encouraged, nurtured, sustained and celebrated to ensure a legacy for future
generations. However, it is not the intention of this dissertation to offer critiques on today’s works.
It is for the reader to draw his or her own conclusions on the variety and quality of work and a small
sample of those poets and poems that have been referenced is annexed for that purpose.
BACKGROUND
There has been a symbiotic and complex relationship between war and art since man first fashioned
his killing tools and found a creative language to articulate his triumphs and despairs. War, and
man’s role in war, has been recorded in song, sculpture, theatre, poetry and prose. Yet pairing
together the diametrically opposed acts of destruction and creation presents a peculiar paradox and
nowhere is this paradox more acutely felt, and more difficult to wrestle with, than in ‘war poetry’.
These two words present us with a neat, simple verbal construct, but they conceal challenging
abstract issues that are less easy to understand because, from the outset, we are dealing with two
concepts that defy simplistic definitions. 8
The Difficulties In Defining Poetry And War
Wordsworth described poetry as ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin
from emotion recollected in tranquillity’. (And as Jon Stallworthy points out ‘there can be no
greater range of powerful feelings than war: hope and fear; exhilaration and humiliation; hatred –
not only for the enemy, but also for generals, politicians, and war-profiteers; love – for fellow
soldiers, for women and children left behind, for country (often) and cause (occasionally)’ . 9 ) When
asked by Mr Boswell to describe the essence of poetry, the wise Dr Johnson replied: ‘Why sir, it is
much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is’.
Alexander Pope observed that poetry is ‘What oft was thought, but n’ere so well expressed’; and
WH Auden is remembered for his description of poetry as ‘memorable speech’. Unsurprisingly
there can be no single definition for poetry. Arguably the delight and mystery of poetry is that it is
ever-changing and multifaceted, defying simplistic definition. Finding an unambiguous definition
for war is equally fraught, although many scholars expend countless hours attempting to do just
that. To avoid the pitfalls of such a rich, yet labyrinthine, academic debate, we will settle on a
7 ‘They who in folly or mere greed/Enslaved religion, markets, laws/Borrow our language now and bid/Us to speak up
in freedom’s cause/It is the logic of our times/No subject for immortal verse-/That we who lived by honest
dreams/Defend the bad against the worse’, C Day Lewis, “Where are the war poets”, The Complete Poems, (Sinclair-
Stevenson, 1992), page 335.
8 Of course, joining together ‘love’ and ‘poetry’ present similar challenges, but there is not the same dichotomy. Tim
Kendall explores this paradox in more detail - ‘One suggests destruction, the other creation; one chaos, the other order;
one pain, the other pleasure’. Tim Kendall, The Oxford Handbook of British & Irish War Poetry, ed Tim Kendall
(Oxford University Press, 2009), page 1.
9 Jon Stallworthy, Introduction, The Oxford Book of War Poetry, (Oxford University Press, 1984), page 1.
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