New Biography of Winifred M. Letts Published
Wilfred Owen Birthday Lecture 2021
‘Reading “Hiawatha”, Writing Friendships: Wilfred Owen & Mrs Fullerton’, a lecture by Dr Paul Norgate, recorded on 18 March to mark Wilfred Owen’s birthday, now available on the Wilfred Owen Association’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60LdOcOFHH0
Robert Graves Letters Online
The RobertGravesLetters.org site is dedicated to hosting transcriptions of letters written by the British poet & novelist, Robert Graves (1895 – 1985) http://www.robertgravesletters.org/
The Last Days of Wilfred Owen #OwenLastDays
#OwenLastDays is a project by the Faculty of English Language and Literature on the last days of the First World War Poet Wilfred Owen. To note this event they are running a major social media outreach campaign focused on Wilfred Owen’s legacy. This will form part of the 100th anniversary commemoration for Owen’s death on 4th November 1918, just one week before the end of the First World War. Widely regarded as one of the most important British poets of the First World War, Owen has been studied, read, and enjoyed by generations of students. His poems such as ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ and ‘Strange Meeting’ have helped to shape (rightly or wrongly) many perceptions of the War. The Faculty will be tweeting (@ww1lit) using #OwenLastDays between 22nd October and 4th November, recording Owen’s movements and activities during the last two weeks of his life before the battle of the Sambre-Oise Canal. Read more
Centenary News – First World War 1914-1918
Centenary News is a not for profit social enterprise that has been set up to provide independent, impartial and international coverage of the Centenary of the First World War.
The site has the following sections:
News Items – Debates – Videos – Articles and Blogs – Centenary News Features – Book Reviews – Events Diary – Organisation Profiles
A Century Back – Writing the Great War, Day by Day
I’ve just come across this site which, along similar lines to our Facebook page, follows 26 writers and posts excerpts of something that was written or discusses something that happened a century ago to the day. The goal is ‘to build a long, slow literary history of the British experience of the Western Front. News November 2024: the site appears to have been hijacked so the link has been removed.
Song of the Poets for Choir and Orchestra
This new piece by Canadian composer Abigal Richardson-Schulte was commissioned by the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Thunder Bay Symphony and Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra for the international WWI commemoration project The World Remembers. Song of the Poets is a six minute work for choir and orchestra based on excerpts from five poems written by soldiers of First World War – Canadian John McCrae, English poet Wilfred Owen, French poets Louis Aragon and Luc Durtain and German poet Gerrit Engelke.
The composer says
These are not graphic poems of fighting, nor are they propaganda to gain support for the war effort. Each of these poems looks at the outcome of war, told with the perspective of poets able to see beyond their own circumstances. The music is simple and narrative in order to best impart the text. Each section has its own distinct musical themes however there are similarities to link each section together to form a unified piece, despite the language and perspective differences of five different voices. We seamlessly follow their stories through place and time.
More information: http://www.musiccentre.ca/node/123356
Composer’s website http://abigailrichardson.com/
Information supplied by Penelope Monkhouse
EA Projects and Contributions
British Poetry of the First World War, Wadham College, Oxford, 5-7 September, 2014
To mark the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War, the English Association hosted a major international conference, British Poetry of the First World War, in Oxford in September 2014. The conference Patron was Professor Jon Stallworthy (University of Oxford) and the Convenor was Professor Tim Kendall (University of Exeter).
Keynote speakers were Professor Edna Longley (Queen’s University, Belfast) and Professor Jay Winter (Yale University). Events included lectures, readings, a recital presented by the composer Ian Venables, with baritone Roderick Williams accompanied by pianist Gary Matthewman, exhibitions, a book launch and Conference Dinner.
Societies, associations and fellowships concerned with poetry and poets of the Great War were invited to participate in this conference, including having the opportunity for stands to promote their activities and publications. Providing a forum for these groups, who do so much to sustain interest in war poetry and to further understanding of its contexts, was a key aim of the conference. http://englishassociation.ac.uk/conference/exhibitors/
Visit the conference website: http://englishassociation.ac.uk/conference/