Anthem for Doomed Youth

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was an English poet and soldier who served on the Western Front in the First World War. He wrote most of his famous poems in the last two years of his life, partly under the encouragement of Siegfried Sassoon, whom he met while recovering in a military hospital. He was killed in action a week before the Armistice, and only a handful of his poems had appeared in print.

Anthem for Doomed Youth was written in 1917 and is among his best-known works. It is a sonnet, and it contrasts the rituals of mourning at home with the noise and violence of war. Sassoon is known to have commented on early drafts. After Owen's death his poems were collected and published, and they have had a lasting effect on the way the war is remembered, in schools and on days of remembrance.

This recording comes from a LibriVox weekly poetry project, the one for the week of 5 November 2006, chosen to mark Veterans Day, Remembrance Day and Armistice Day. It contains twelve versions, each read by a different volunteer, including Annie Coleman Rothenberg, Andrew Lebrun and Cori Samuel, and runs for about twenty minutes in all. Listening to them one after another shows how much interpretation depends on tempo and tone. It is a moving and thought-provoking collection, ideal for a moment of quiet reflection. The poem is only fourteen lines, so even a single version is over in moments, yet it leaves a lasting impression on the ear and the memory.