author
Wilfred Owen
1893–1918
Remembered as one of the defining poets of the First World War, he turned his experience as a soldier into fierce, compassionate poems about trench life, gas attacks, and the human cost of battle. His work, including "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and "Dulce et Decorum Est," remains powerful because it rejects easy patriotism and keeps its focus on suffering, pity, and truth.
1 Audiobook
Poems
by Wilfred Owen
About the author
Born in Oswestry, Shropshire, on March 18, 1893, Wilfred Owen grew up in England and developed a deep love of poetry early on. He served as both a soldier and an officer in the First World War, and the reality of trench warfare became the driving force behind his writing.
Owen is widely regarded as one of the central war poets of the conflict. His poems are known for their vivid detail, emotional force, and refusal to romanticize combat. His friendship with fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon helped shape his voice, but Owen’s work feels unmistakably his own: angry at waste, tender toward ordinary soldiers, and determined to show war as it really was.
He was killed in action in France on November 4, 1918, just a week before the Armistice. Much of his reputation was built after his death, when his poems reached a wider audience and came to define how many readers understand the First World War.