UK KIDS MISS OUT ON POETRY

I used to write poetry: about war; about women I loved.

So this is very sad news: Many UK primary schoolchildren ‘drastically’ missing out on poetry

Wilfred Owen wrote some superb poetry. He died just 1 week before the end of WW1 having been a member of the British Army since October 1915.

This is The Send-off:

Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way

To the siding-shed,

And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

 

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray

As men's are, dead.

 

Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp

Stood staring hard,

Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.

Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp

Winked to the guard.

 

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.

They were not ours:

We never heard to which front these were sent.

 

Nor there if they yet mock what women meant

Who gave them flowers.

 

Shall they return to beatings of great bells

In wild trainloads?

A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,

May creep back, silent, to still village wells

Up half-known roads.