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Useful Resources : Websites for Poets and Writers : Poetry of War
A Treasury of War Poetry: British and American Poems of the World War, 1914-1917
Edited, with introduction and notes, by George Herbert Clarke. The full text of this 1917 anthology, containing many poems by lesser-known contemporaries alongside the likes of Sassoon and Owen, has been made available online by Bob Blair.
| | Agent Orange Quilt of Tears
Traveling memorial to US veterans who were exposed to the toxic chemical Agent Orange during their service in the Vietnam and Korean wars. Read a sample from Vietnam vet Ron Murray's poetry book Memories Never Die. Sale proceeds go to support Agent Orange victims and widows.
| | BBC - Remembrance - Poetry and Art
Read classic poems of World War I by Owen, Sassoon and others. Contemporary poets are invited to submit their own poems on the themes of war and remembrance.
| | Bob Newman: "An Irish Lament"
Reflections on the conflict in Northern Ireland. This poem won Manifold's Ireland Competition in 2001. Visit Mr. Newman's website for more poems and an excellent glossary of poetic forms from the common to the obscure.
| | British War Poetry in the Age of Romanticism, 1793-1815
By Betty T. Bennett. Essay briefly surveys the literature of war in Britain during a crucial period in the development of the modern nation-state. Includes extensive bibliography. This essay is the introduction to a larger anthology not available online.
| | COMBAT Magazine
The Literary Expression of Battlefield Touchstones. This magazine launched online in January 2003. Authors are invited to submit their work via email.
| | Community of Veterans
Social networking site sponsored by veterans' advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America was conceived as a "virtual VFW hall" where vets and troops can create profiles, find buddies, and share stories of their combat experiences. This site replaces the IAVA forum Troopnet.org.
| | Consequence Magazine
Consequence is a Massachusetts-based literary magazine, published annually, focusing on the culture of war in America. They accept short fiction, poetry, nonfiction, interviews, and artwork, and offer an annual poetry prize.
| | Curly-Headed Pussycat
Israeli poet Elisha Porat tells the story of two writers,
one an angry young war veteran who hopes poetry
will ease his traumatic memories, the other an
sanguine older man who learns his own lesson about
the fragility of youth and beauty.
| | Dream Voices: Siegfried Sassoon, Memory and War
Online slideshow of the World War I poet's correspondence, drawings, and poems from the front, selected from the Cambridge University Library exhibit of his personal papers (open through December 23, 2010). The 5-minute video narrated by curator John Wells includes a discussion of how Sassoon's anti-war views evolved.
| | First World War Poetry Digital Archive
This British website features work by the major poets of WWI, plus contextual resources, online tutorials, podcasts, lesson plans, and more.
| | Huffington Post: Beyond the Battlefield
This 10-part series from online newspaper The Huffington Post features real-life stories of the physical and emotional challenges, victories and setbacks that catastrophically wounded soldiers encounter after returning home.
| | Ingrid Wendt: "The Unknown Good in Our Enemies"
This essay honoring the poet William Stafford reflects on how literature can foster mutual understanding and empathy in order to break the cycle of violence. This article appeared in the April 2011 newsletter of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
| | International War Veterans' Poetry Archives
A large, active, democratic home for the poetry of war. A good place to start is the Honor Rolls and Awards page, honoring the best poems and websites. Free submissions welcome. They will be posted at the discretion of the webmaster.
| | Jessie Wallace Hughan: Three Antiwar Poems
Hughan was a pacifist activist during World War I and founded the War Resisters League.
| | John Amen: "Walking Unsure of Myself: Election Day, 2004"
Hallucinatory meditation on the political culture of wartime America, by John Amen, editor of the bimonthly journal
The Pedestal Magazine
| | Korean War Stories
Vivid personal anecdotes and poems based on the experiences of US veterans in the 143rd Field Artillery during the Korean War.
| | Kseniya Simonova's Sand Paintings
This unique and moving 8-minute video shows young
Ukrainian artist Kseniya Simonova creating a sand
painting that narrates the devastating impact of the
Nazi invasion.
| | Lyn Lifshin: "A Wet Cold Winter to Come"
A haunting sequence of 9/11 poems. Part of the
Political Anthology now online at The Pedestal
Magazine.
| | Marine Corps Heritage Foundation (The)
The Marine Corps Heritage Foundation sponsors several free awards for books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by veterans and/or about Marine Corps history and life.
| | Martin Steele: "Lost Tears"
In this dark, dreamlike prose poem, the landscape of desert warfare mirrors the deadened heart of a narrator whose empathy is finally stirred by an unknown soldier's death.
| | Mehadi Foundation
The Mehadi Foundation (pronounced "meh-húh-DEE") is a nonprofit foundation with two missions. The first is to serve as a support network providing assistance to United States Armed Forces Veterans who were enlisted during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Our intention is to reach out especially to veterans who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and those who self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, or who suffer from other addictive patterns. The Mehadi foundation makes a special effort to reach out to members of the LGBTQ community who served under the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" statute. The second mission is to support humanitarian efforts in Iraq: helping civilians as they attempt to rebuild in the wake of the conflict. We place special emphasis on providing wheelchairs to those in need without access to them, water purification projects for schools, and helping in any way we can, LGBTQ Iraqis who have been the targets of extreme abuse and persecution.
| | Military Experience and the Arts
This organization's mission is to bridge the gap between military and civilian cultures through creative expression and scholarship. The site includes resources to help veterans write their personal stories. MEA publishes three magazines: The Blue Falcon, a journal of military fiction; Blue Streak, a journal of military poetry; and the Journal of Military Experience, an interdisciplinary scholarly periodical. See website for their calls for submissions.
| | Military Writers Society of America
Association of writers and artists who honor the military through their creative works. Most of the 500+ members are active-duty or veterans,
but civilians may also join. The MWSA offers annual awards for published books in a variety of genres including nonfiction (scholarly and
popular), children's literature, poetry, fiction, memoirs, spiritual/religious, and science fiction. The site also features many book reviews.
| | Online Poetry Classroom - The Literature of War
Introduces high school students to poetry through the theme of war. Harvey Starbuck of Olathe High School (Colorado) describes his course in detail and provides links to poems, lesson plans, teaching strategies and a webliography.
| | Operation Homecoming
The National Endowment for the Arts created Operation Homecoming to help U.S. troops and their families write about their wartime experiences. Their letters, poems, stories, and memoirs will be collected into a national archive, and the best submissions will be published in a literary anthology. The anthology submission deadline is May 31, 2005; submissions after this date still will be included in the archive.
| | Order of the Silver Rose
This group's mission is to honor the courage,
heroism, and contributions of American service
personnel found to have been exposed to Agent
Orange in a combat zone. Since victims of this
toxic chemical, used by the US during the Korean
and Vietnam wars, are not eligible for a Purple
Heart, this private organization created the Silver
Rose as an alternative commemoration.
| | Pen World Voices Festival Video: "War"
This 80-minute video from the 2010 Pen World Voices Festival, held April 26-May 2 in New York City, features journalists Deborah Amos, Philip Gourevitch, Arnon Grunberg, Sebastian Junger, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, and Sarah Montague, speaking about the challenges of reporting from war zones and the writer's role as witness.
| | Pens and Swords: What Is the Role of the Writer in a Conflict Zone?
The Mantle, an international online forum for progressive critique, hosted this roundtable featuring authors and poets Sehba Sarwar (Houston, USA/Karachi, Pakistan), Tolu Ogunlesi (Lagos, Nigeria), and Vicente Garcia Groyon (Manila, Philippines). Mantle editor and moderator Shaun Randol asks, "What is the role of the writer in a conflict zone?...Must the writer choose sides in a conflict, and put pen to paper to write editorials or blast propaganda? Should the writer drop the pen and pick up a megaphone and a protest placard instead? Perhaps the writer should abandon the craft altogether, pick up a sword, and join the fight. And if so, which side does he or she choose? Or, perhaps, in conflict the writer has no obligation at all, and is free to navel gaze in seclusion, letting the bickering sides fight it out while he pursues his own literary interests."
| | Poems About War (Academy of American Poets)
Brief overview of modern poets' approach to the subject of war and its atrocities, with links to classic and contemporary authors. Other useful links to World War I poets can be found on their Wilfred Owen page.
| | Poet Ferlinghetti Chased Subs in WWII
San Francisco Chronicle article recounts the wartime experiences of famous Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and his conversion to pacifist principles after viewing the devastation at Nagasaki.
| | Poetry and Songs of World War I
Directory includes links to biographies and sample work by war poets such as Owen, Sassoon, and Graves, as well as lesser-known figures. Other links include literary criticism, historical discussion, and sheet music and recordings of popular songs from the period.
| | Poetry from the Warsaw Ghetto
M. Jastrun's poem 'The Funeral', translated by Anne Appleton, is taken from a chapbook entitled 'Poezje Ghetta: Z Otchlani' (Ghetto Poems: From the Abyss), a collection of eleven poems written by Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland. The book was smuggled out of Poland after the martyrdom of the ghetto residents and published in 1945 by the Friends of the New York Jewish Tribune. Ms. Appleton is seeking a translator for the remaining poems; please contact us with suggestions.
| | Poetry of Henry Reed
This website collects critical and biographical
information for the poet, radio dramatist, and translator
Henry Reed (1914-1986), best known for his antiwar
poem 'Naming of Parts'.
| | Poetry of Resilience
'Poetry of Resilience' is a documentary by Academy Award-nominated director Katja Esson about six international poets who individually survived Hiroshima, the Holocaust, China's Cultural Revolution, the Kurdish Genocide in Iraq, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Iranian Revolution. These six artists present us with a close-up perspective of the "wide shot" of political violence. Each story is powerful, but the film's strength comes from its collective voice: different political conflicts, cultures, genders, ages, races – one shared human narrative.
| | PoetrySuperHighway Holocaust Remembrance Day Issue
Powerful poems recall the Holocaust in words of grief, anger, love and truth. We particularly like this 2005 issue; see the PSH archives for links to previous annual Holocaust issues. These issues are published annually during the week of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Submissions are accepted during the preceding week only.
| | PoetrySuperHighway Holocaust Remembrance Day Issue 2011
PSH's 13th annual Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) issue features 23 poets from around the world. Contributors include Donal Mahoney, John Guzlowski, Jim Bennett, and David Neves.
| | Raving Dove
Online literary journal dedicated to sharing thought-provoking writing, photography, and art that opposes the use of violence as conflict resolution, and embraces the intrinsic themes of peace and human rights. Also features a good list of links to humanitarian organizations.
| | Real Combat Life
Patrick Nelson, who served as an Army paratrooper in Afghanistan and Iraq, started this blog as a place for veterans to share their personal stories, connect with others, and help the public understand what life in combat is really like.
| | Ross Gay: "Cousin Drowses on the Flight to Kuwait"
Listen to a podcast of the author reading this war poem at the Poets & Writers Magazine website.
| | Rupert Brooke
One of the great soldier-poets of World War I, Brooke was a romantic figure and socialist activist whose social circle included E.M. Forster, Henry James, Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. Unlike contemporaries who emphasized the horrors of modern warfare, Brooke wrote of patriotic idealism and comradeship in the face of death. He served in the Navy during WWI and died in 1915, at the age of 28, while stationed in Greece.
| | Shards: Poems from the War
Contemporary war poetry selected by Eugene Volokh. Professor Volokh teaches law at UCLA. Submissions welcome - formal verse sought.
| | Singing of War
War poetry scholar Peggy Rosenthal reviews two anthologies on the topic, and discusses the place of poetry in the curriculum of the famed West Point military academy, in this article from Christianity Today.
| | Slate Article: 'Poems of War'
Six leading writers and editors - Robert Pinsky, Alice Quinn, Judith Shulevitz, Dan Chiasson, Anthony Swofford, and Robert Fagles - discuss the poems that they turn to in times of war. Includes audio clips of them reading the poems.
| | The Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences
A project of the University of Massachusetts-Boston, the Joiner Center promotes research, curriculum development, public events, and educational, cultural, and humanitarian exchanges which foster greater understanding and innovative means of addressing the consequences of war. Their annual writers' workshop is taught by Iraq and Vietnam veterans and others whose works address issues of social justice, cultural, political, and community concern.
| | The Poetry of War at NPR
This National Public Radio series from 2003 (archived on their website) includes the written text and audio recordings of classic war poems, from the Iliad to Wilfred Owen.
| | The Punji Pit
Well-crafted poetry by Vietnam veteran John A. Moller recounts the experiences of the New Zealanders who fought in that war. We especially liked 'A Gunner Goes Home'.
| | The Vietnam Veterans' Wordsmiths
Webring of sites devoted to the writings of Vietnam veterans includes both literary sites and personal homepages of veterans and their families.
| | The War Poetry Website
British site features bios of leading WWI poets, links to anthologies, and well-crafted poetry about contemporary conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.
| | They Remember War
Writecorner Press editor Robert B. Gentry interviewed residents of the Oak Hammock retirement community at the University of Florida in Gainesville who were veterans of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Their oral histories are collected on this page on Writecorner's website.
| | Trenches on the Web
World War I reference site maintained by the Great War Society. Their online newsletter, the St. Mihiel Trip-Wire, features historical research, book recommendations and links to materials about World War I. The site also includes a historical overview of the war, an extensive links directory, discussion forums, and information on battlefield tours.
| | Union Songs
This Australian website has collected over 600 labor union and political protest songs, from classics like "Bread and Roses" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" to contemporary offerings such as "After We Torture Our Prisoners". A number of the songs are accompanied by audio recordings. An extensive links directory provides information on other working-class music and cultural sites.
| | Urdeen Sylvester
From Nigeria, a deaf poet sees with all senses in "Echoes of the Gulf (Conscience of War)".
| | Vera Rich: Two Poems of World War II
Evocative war poetry by the editor of the British literary journal Manifold.
| | Veterans History Project
Library of Congress site collects personal reminiscences from veterans of recent wars. Search archives by time period or branch of service, or find out how you can add your own memories to the historical record.
| | Vigil for Darfur
This moving poem by 17-year-old Sabina Carlson supports Amnesty International's campaign for diplomatic and humanitarian aid to stop the
genocidal civil war in Sudan's Darfur region. Visit their website to find out how you can help.
| | Voices in Wartime
New online community encourages reflection and
dialogue about war through the work of classic and
contemporary poets. Visit their site for information
about Poetry in Wartime, a documentary released to
coincide with the 3rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
| | War Poetry by David Ray
Mr. Ray was one of the founders of American Writers Against the Vietnam War in 1966. Recent books include 'The Death of Sardanapalus: and Other Poems of the Iraq Wars' and 'One Thousand Years: Poems about the Holocaust'.
| | War Poets (Wikipedia)
Brief overview of the emergence and development of the contemporary war poetry genre, with links to information on major poets of World Wars I and II.
| | War Poets Association
The War Poets Association promotes interest in the work, life and historical context of poets whose subject is the experience of war, with particular interest in World Wars I and II, the Spanish Civil War, and the conflict in Northern Ireland. Their website posts announcements of new publications in this field, calls for papers, and literary events (mostly in London).
| | Why Are We In Iraq
Poetry website dedicated to giving the poets of the 21st century a place to speak out about a world consumed with war, peace, religious intolerance, military strategy, violence and hate. Featured authors include Anne Caston, Frederick Van Kirk, and Ronald Wallace. See website for submission guidelines.
| | Winning Writers War Poetry Contest Winners
This contest sponsored by Winning Writers seeks the best unpublished poems on the theme of war. Poignant, horrifying, uplifting, or darkly humorous, these beautifully written winning poems stand out for their ability to teach us something important about war and the complexity of human nature.
| | Words of War: Comparing Veterans' Experiences with War Poetry
This lesson plan module from The New York Times suggests readings and writing prompts to help students reflect on how war is portrayed in literature and in veterans' first-person accounts.
| | World War I Historical Association
This site is the portal for several related sites about the history and literature of World War I: the Great War Society, the Western Front Association USA, and the St. Mihiel Trip-Wire.
| | WW2 People's War
BBC-sponsored forum where users can read and contribute personal stories of their experiences in World War II, either battlefield or homefront. Also includes lesson plans, historical resources, timelines and maps, and tips for researching your family history.
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