Help! cant find civilian WWI poet?!?

[recurve shooter]

im doing a porject for my english class researching poets of WWI. i really want to find some poems written by poets that did not see action. anyone know any such poets?

[Stoker]

Hi Recurve Shooter
The most famous poem I can think of is "IN FLANDERS FEILDS" Written by Lt Colonal Dr. John McCrae a Canadain physician.
Written May 3 1915 after he witnessed the death of his freind Lt Alexis Helmer the day before. First published December 8 1915
London magazine PUNCH. I learned this poem in school growing up. Never really hit home till I was going through Holland in 78 I was travelling to where my father was born and raised.If you have ever seen the movie  "A Bridge to Far " Before you get to the bridge the hills are lined with white cross's.It truly makes you think about the sacifice of so many young men. Once you cross the bridge go 11kms and you would land at Opa's front door.Good luck on your assignment
Thanks Leroy

[Stoker]

After I replied it sank in that you wanted a civilian poet.
Old too soon smart too late   
Thanks Leroy

[recurve shooter]

lol hey thanks a ton for the reply anyway. 

[criveraville]

Not many civilian poets for WW1, but A E Housman wrote, Here Dead We Die. 

Lots of vets wrote poignant poems. Owens, etc..

If you want email me your paper and I will look over it for you. I do that sort of thing for fun 

[stickbender]

     I don't know of any Civilian poets, that wrote about the First World War, but Robert  Service, was a prolific poet, and became, I believe the unofficial Poet Laurette for Alaska, back in the late nineteen hundreds, and early twenties.  He was a conscientious objector, and was assigned to ambulance duties.  He saw some horrific stuff, and his early poems reflect it.  Later on he immigrated to Canada, and then to Alaska, where his poems eventually became more humorous.  Some of my favorites are the " Ice worm Cocktail, The shooting of Dan Mc Grew, the Burial of Blasphemous Bill MacKie, The cremation of Sam Mc Gee "  But like I said his first stuff was quite maudlin, and morbid.  Some of the better ones at that time period were Bill the Bomber, and The Haggis, of Private Mc Phee, On the Wire, and The Whistle of Sandy Mc Graw.  But nonetheless He is one of my favorite poets.  Look him up anyway, you might just like what you read.    If you do go to a book store, and get the "Collected Poems of Robert Service".

                                                                       Wayne

[JW_Halverson]

I’ve tinkered at my bits of rhymes
In weary, woeful, waiting times;
In doleful hours of battle-din,
Ere yet they brought the wounded in;
Through vigils of the fateful night,
In lousy barns by candle-light;
In dug-outs, sagging and aflood,
On stretchers stiff and bleared with blood;
By ragged grove, by ruined road,
By hearths accurst where Love abode;
By broken altars, blackened shrines
I’ve tinkered at my bits of rhymes.

-excerpt from the Foreward to Robert Service's "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man"

Robert Service was living as a struggling poet in Montmartre neighborhood of Paris when WWI broke out.  He watched as his fellow artists went off to their home nations and joined the respective military services, but could not find it in himself to join the cause to fight.  Instead, he joined the Red Cross as a stretcher bearer and ambulance driver.  He was in the thick of it for quite some time and was wounded himself.  Wayne/Stickbender mentions some of the great works in this collection.  Some of the stuff points out the sheer stupid barbarity of war, other pieces like "Jean Desprez" reveal the epic struggle of good versus evil.  Service never, ever considered himself a poet.  But rather just a "rhymster", a "writer of middling verse".  But it speaks to regular people like us, not the ejicated ivory tower types.  His introduction to "Rhymes of a Red Cross Man" continues:

:...So here’s my sheaf of war-won verse,
And some is bad, and some is worse.
And if at times I curse a bit,
You needn’t read that part of it;
For through it all like horror runs
The red resentment of the guns.
And you yourself would mutter when
You took the things that once were men,
And sped them through that zone of hate
To where the dripping surgeons wait;
And wonder too if in God’s sight
War ever, ever can be right.

Yet may it not be, crime and war
But effort misdirected are?
And if there’s good in war and crime,
There may be in my bits of rhyme,
My songs from out the slaughter mill:
So take or leave them as you will."