The Folio Book of War Poetry

In his introduction to this unique Folio anthology, Andrew Motion tells us the best war poetry is ‘concerned with much more than war itself – which helps to explain why we take it so much to heart’. It is a promise fulfilled in the former Poet Laureate’s brilliant, eclectic selection, stretching from translations from Homer’s Iliad (‘the first and greatest of all war poems’) to 20th-century verse written in the shadow of nuclear apocalypse. Motion’s net takes in Anglo-Saxon epic, Cavalier poetry from the English Civil War and reactions to the horrors of the Blitz. There are works translated from classical Greek, Latin and Chinese, from medieval Welsh and from modern Polish and German. There is a strong showing from the First World War, with well-loved works by Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but Motion seeks also to include lesser-heard voices on war, in poems by women including Emily Dickinson, Stevie Smith and Elizabeth Bishop. The Folio Book of War Poetry is an anthology with as much to tell about human conflict as any history book, curated by one of Britain’s greatest living poets.