Throughout the First World War a small handful of soldiers and nurses
created a body of poetry so vivid and intense that one hundred years
later it remains in our national consciousness.
This collection, edited by Professor Paul O’Prey, looks to challenge the
notion that all war poetry was of a similar anti-war sentiment, focusing
on fifteen poets who all saw active military service and composed
poems while they worked, nursed and fought.
Poems from the Front includes ‘November 11th
’ by Robert Graves, appearing for the first time as a poem
in its own right. A street ballad, it was written in draft to arts patron Edward Marsh in November 1918.
Persuaded not to publish it that year, Graves instead released a version in 1969, considering it
unprintable until then.
The anthology also features ‘ When you see millions of the mouthless dead’ by Charles Sorley, an
unfinished poem found in his kit bag after he had been killed, highlighting the circumstances in which
many poets found themselves as they wrote.
Three little-known poems by the American nurse Mary Borden are published here in book form for the
first time. Borden, already an author at the outbreak of the First World War, was independently wealthy
but chose to enlist in the French Red Cross in 1914, and funded and ran her own military field hospital.