Wilfred Owen

Wilfrid Owen was born near Oswestry in the West of England. His father was a railway worker. Wilfrid Owen wrote his first poems in 1904. After studying botany and Old English at the University of Reading, he moved to France where he taught English at the Berlitz School in Bordeaux and then worked as a tutor for a middle-class family in the Pyrenees. He joined the Artists’ Rifles in October 1915. After six months of training, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and assigned to the Manchester Regiment. When in action on the Somme, he was blown up by an exploding shell and remained unconscious for several days. He was treated in Scotland for depression and shell shock. After his return to the front, he saw action in a number of offensives. He was killed during an attack on German positions defending the Sambre Canal in Oise. He is laid to rest in Ors, in Cambrésis. Today, Wilfred Owen is considered one of the greatest English poets of the twentieth century. It was during his hospitalisation that Wilfrid Owen’s poetry took on a tragic dimension. Encouraged by his doctor, he gave voice to his experience of war and the trauma of battle through poetry.