Wilfred Owen – Biography of Wilfred Owen

Wilfred owen was an English poet, whose work was characterized by his anger at the cruelty and tragedy of war, which he had experienced while serving on the Western Front.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen He was born on March 18, 1893 in Oswestry, Shropshire. After school he became a teaching assistant and in 1913 he went to France for two years to work as a language teacher. He started writing poetry when he was a teenager.

In 1915 he returned to England to enlist in the army and was commissioned into the Manchester Regiment. After spending his year-long training in England, he went to the Western Front in early January 1917. After engaging in heavy fighting, he was diagnosed with neurosis. He was evacuated to England and arrived at the Craiglockhart war hospital, near Edinburgh.

There he met the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who already had a reputation as a poet and shared the views of Owen. Sassoon agreed to review Owen’s poems, encouraged him, and introduced him to such literary figures as Robert Graves.

Reading Sassoon’s poems and discussing his own work with the renowned poet, he revolutionized the style of Owen and his conception of poetry. He returned to France in August 1918 and in October he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery.

On November 4, 1918, he was killed while trying to lead his men through the Sambre canal in Ors. News of his death reached his parents on November 11, Armistice Day.

Edited by Sassoon and published in 1920, the only volume of poems by Owen contains some of the most poignant English poetry of World War I, including ‘Dulce et decorum est‘ Y ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth‘.