Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was born on 8 September 1886 at Weirleigh, a house near the village of Matfield in Kent, and died on 1 September 1967 at Heytesbury House in Wiltshire, a week before his eighty-first birthday. He remains one of the defining literary witnesses of the First World War: a poet whose plain speech, anger, technical control, and mordant irony broke through the patriotic consolations of his age. Yet…
“I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and can no longer be a party to prolonging those sufferings for ends which I believe to be wrong and unjust.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, LGBTQ+ Poets, Political Poets, War Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Despair, Irony
5 live poems · Welsh, English
In the rolling hills of Carmarthenshire, where the coal dust mingles with morning mist and the Welsh language flows like the streams that carve the valleys, a remarkable story unfolded in the latter half of the nineteenth century. It is the story of Watkin Hezekiah Williams, better known by his bardic name Watcyn Wyn, whose journey from the depths of coal mines to the heights of Welsh literary achievement embodies th…
“I am a great believer in new light, but let us always remember that the source of light is the same, and keep our eyes open to see it growing brighter and brighter until noon.”
Neighbourhood:
Edwardian Poets, Folk & Ballad Poets, Nature Poets, Welsh Poets
Emotional landscape: Wonder, Peace, Spirituality