Year 9 History : Australians at war (WW1): Poetry and Literature

The shattering ordeal of the Great War in the trenches took its toll on a generation of men who were called tip to fight in the nightmare of the trenches. The experience proved so awe inspiring that for many the Great War could only be summed up in verse. Today their work has become famous for its poignancy and sense of loss. Young men such as Wilfred Owen, John McCrae and Rupert Brooke were cut down in their prime yet their memory lives on in the brief flowering of immortal verse. Others survived the war and were able to add a more reflective aspect. This powerful documentary, written and directed by film-maker Bob Carruthers, revisits the battlefields where the war poets found their inspiration and presents a moving and comprehensive survey of their lives and work.

The futility and madness of the First World War was the spur for some of the most moving poetry ever written. This documentary traces the development of war poetry from Anglo Saxon times to the nightmare of the trenches and looks at the work of Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. The War Poets is introduced and narrated by Brian Blessed with literary analysis by Jon Stallworthy, the foremost authority on war poetry today.

Stadler, like other German poets, responded with enthusiasm to the outbreak of the first world war, but there was no poetry to be found in the trenches

During the war he served as a regiment doctor in Flanders, but was still able to publish his first poetry collection Gloria! Kriegsgedichte aus dem Feld (War poems from the field) in 1915.