Introduction : very briefly, my perspective on this subject

Although I am interested in poetry and war during the twentieth century in general, I have kept these pages within a reasonably narrow focus : English poetry written about and during the Second World War. I have extended the usual timescale of the war to 1938-1948 so as to include poems written and events occurring during the immediate prelude and aftermath of war.  I have so far reluctantly confined myself to a metropolitan perspective, but I hope to develop Commonwealth perspectives in the not too distant future. I would of course welcome ideas about and links to other poets writing about their experiences of the Second World War.

"About and during the Second World War" is a deliberately ambiguous phrase. "About" is to be taken in the widest sense : poetry can be both explicitly and implicitly about war. My main focus will be on poetry written during the war, but later poetry inspired by the war will not be entirely ignored. My title "Poetry and the Second World War" deliberately avoids the issue of defining "war poetry", because I am not so much interested in defining a genre as looking at poets' responses to a particular war and the effect of those responses, both directly on the conduct of that war and on the construction or deconstruction of myths about that war.