Wilfred Owen's Poetry

Wilfred Owen was strongly against war. He could not see what it achieved, only the suffering it caused. After becoming shell-shocked in 1917 he took a hatred to war and began to write poetry to express his sentiments on the subject. As he had been through it, his poetry was very impressive and showed a lot of feeling. He also spent some time at a hospital in Edinburgh which was part of his inspiration for some …

…of it. In his poems we imagine the horrific deaths and injuries that they had to endure. Poems such as these help modern-day readers to see what people went through in the war, and not to just neglect them as people did in ‘Disabled’. These poems are only about one man’s life and experiences. Millions of men had lives worse than this, and often we do not even want to think of the numbers.