Want some more ideas...?
Perhaps take a browse through some of the great poetry already written and see what images come to mind ...
Some useful links:
Ideas could include:
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Poems inspired by original WWI letters
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Methods of communication between soldiers and their families in WWI and since: telegrams, letters, ‘blueys’, emails, phone calls, text messages, Skype.
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Messages received by families about service men or women or civilians wounded, killed, or taken prisoner.
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‘Untold riches’: the treats and home comforts that service personnel miss or look forward to.
INSPIRATION
The Letter by Wilfred Owen, 1918:
With B.E.F. June 10. Dear Wife,
(Oh blast this pencil. ‘Ere, Bill, lend’s a knife.)
I’m in the pink at present, dear.
I think the war will end this year.
The Last Letter by Sgt Dave Stenhouse, (Heroes, 100 poems from the new generation of War Poets 2011):
The last letter is a letter
they recommend that you write
It’s a letter for you, my loved ones,
because I never returned on the flight.
OTHER POEMS:
The Leveller by Robert Graves
A Letter Home by Siegfried Sassoon
The Man Who Invented Pain by Craig Raine
Compassionate Number by Caroline Candlin
Gramophone Tunes by Eva Dobell,
In a VAD Pantry by Alberta Vickridge,
On Arrival in Theatre by Danny Martin,
Property by Robert Garioch.
UNTOLD RICHES:
For example, The Nut’s Birthday by Jessie Pope:
These gifts, our soldier writes to say,
Have brought him untold riches
To celebrate his natal day
In hard-won Flanders’ ditches.
Lament of a Desert Rat by NJ Trapnell, 1995
I’ve learnt to wash in petrol tins, and shave myself in tea
Whilst balancing the fragments of a mirror on my knee
I’ve learnt to dodge the eighty-eights, and flying lumps of lead
And to keep a foot of sand between a Stuka and my head
1. Dear Mum:
Letters to and from home
Competition Categories
To read more about each category, simply click on the main title below:
Ideas could include:
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Evolving technology and warfare
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The modern service man/woman in the eyes of civilians and vice versa
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National service and the reservists
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Service personnel from other countries
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Women in the forces
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Changing attitudes to sexuality in the military
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9/11 and the War on Terror
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Evolving military language and jargon
INSPIRATION
Many Sisters to Many Brothers by Rose Macaulay, 1917:
Was there a scrap or a ploy in which you, the boy,
Could better me? You could not climb higher,
Ride straighter, run as quick (and to smoke made you sick)
… But I sit here and you’re under fire.
Phooie! By Robert Garioch, 1983:
With my girl,
watching an old movie,
I says,
‘That’s all wrong,’
I says.
‘Those shells on the picture,’
I says,
‘go Phooie-bang,’
Snipers By Peter Street, 1993:
They are watching me
I can feel their minds,
that yes or no,
fingers ready to trigger.
It’s now real: men and women
in a second flopping dead on the pavement
I step over, trying my best
to be invisible
walking home to Wigan ....
OTHER POEMS:
Over The Top by Sybil Bristowe,
Trench Nomenclature by Edmund Blunden,
Morse Lesson by Joy Corfield,
Khukuri by Jagat Nabodit,
Army Life, Army Wife, by Lindsey Cooper,
Grenade by Francis Scarfe.
Tale by Trevor Rawson,
4. The World's Events
Have Rumbled On:
1914 - 2014 The
Changing Face of War
2. A Band of Friends:
Camaraderie and Friendship
Ideas could include:
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Stories of solidarity between friends
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Friendship of those at home, partners, children, veteran groups.
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Laughter shared through the good times and the bad.
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Remembering a fallen friend.
INSPIRATION
The Soldiers by FS Flint, 1915:
O face of my friend,
alone distinct of all that company,
you went on, you went on,
into the darkness
I Wanna Talk by Theodore Knell, 2011:
But me
I would rather sit here and talk
speak his name out loud
search for those elusive answers
shed some of this guilt
OTHER POEMS:
Gut Catcher by Stan Platke
The Last Meeting by Siegfried Sassoon
Bar One by Christopher Duchesne
Dead on the War Path (Anonymous – Pueblo Indian)
Ideas could include:
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Truces between enemy armies, and reconciliation after war
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Developing understanding between civilians and the armed forces
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What happens after war has ended
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Peace and Pacifism: Conscientious Objectors
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Desertion and mutiny
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Jingoism and propaganda
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How serving in the armed forces has changed your perspective
INSPIRATION
Oh stay at home, my lad, and plough by AE Housman, 1922:
And daylight and the air;
Too full already is the grave
Of fellows that were good and brave
And died because they were.
Monthly Killed Numbers for You by Michael Brett, 2011:
My deadline is three for the evening edition.
I take the fractured words, the question-marked numbers,
And I rewrite them
In beautiful English prose
OTHER POEMS:
The Jingo-Woman by Helen Hamilton
The Lament of the Demobilised by Vera Brittain
First World War Poets by Edward Bond
The Conchie by RF Palmer
French Soldiers Mutiny – 1917 by Erich Fried
Reconciliation by Siegfried Sassoon
Strange Beings by Theodore Knell
To Whom It May Concern by Adrian Mitchell
This is My War, but No One Shoots at Me by Simon Barr
