September 29, 2008

IWM/WPA Event: ‘Poetry and the Memory of War’, Imperial War Museum, London, Tuesday 11 November 2008: 7pm.

The WPA’s next major event will be on Remembrance Day, which this year marks the 90th Anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended the First World War. War poetry experts Poet Laureate Professor Andrew Motion, Professor Jon Stallworthy and WPA President Professor Paul O’Prey will discuss how poetry shaped the memory of those who fought in the Great War and the perceptions of the later generations. Poems will be read by close family descendants of the major First World War poets, including Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon (tbc) and Edward Thomas, on the actual 90th anniversary of the day that the war ended. An event not to be missed!

Poetry and the Memory of War is one of a number of  First World War 90th Anniversary events taking place at The Imperial War Museum, which itself was founded as a ‘lasting memorial of common effort and common sacrifice’ in the First World War (or ‘The Great War’). A major exhibition opening on 30 September, In Memoriam: Remembering the Great War commemorates the ninetieth anniversary of the Armistice and tells the story of some 90 individuals whose lives were shaped by the events of the First World War – on the front line and on the home front. For further details of the exhibition click here. For further details of all First World War 90th Anniversary events at the IWM, visit www.iwm.org.uk/upload/package/95/events/events.html .