Stallworthy's War Poet and 25% off selected Carcanet war poetry titles

War Poet, available now in paperback from Carcanet

War Poet by Jon Stallworthy has just been published by Carcanet, and this week on the blog we'd like to share with you one of the poems from the collection, 'Goodbye to Wilfred Owen'. Stallworthy was introduced to Owen's poetry at school, and would later become his biographer. Owen was killed in action in France, 4 November 1918, and this poem is a commemoration of his death.

Goodbye to Wilfred Owen

killed, while helping his men

bring up duckboards, on the

bank of the Sambre Canal.

After the hot convulsion, this

cold struggle to break free – from whom?

I am not myself nor are his

hands mine, though once I was at home

with them. Pale hands his mother praised,

nimble at the keyboard, paler

now and still, waiting to be prised

from wood darker for their pallor.

Head down in a blizzard of shrapnel,

before the sun rose we had lost

more than our way. Disembodied

mist moves on the goose-fleshed canal,

dispersing slowly like the last

plumed exhalations of the dead.

© Jon Stallworthy 2014

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For one week only - 25% off selected war poetry titles

War Poet by Jon Stallworthy

To the War Poets by John Greening

Taking Mesopotamia by Jenny Lewis

Collected Poems by F.T. Prince

Fall in Ghosts: Selected War Prose by Edmund Blunden

Parades's End Vol I by Ford Madox Ford

Parade's End Vol II by Ford Madox Ford

Parade's End Vol III by Ford Madox Ford

Parade's End Vol IV by Ford Madox Ford

Under Storm's Wing by Helen Thomas