#wilfred owen

ICYMI, our new partnership with Manual Cinema in honor of 100 years since the end of World War I is here! Three World War I Poems brings a selection of poems to life with innovative paper puppetry and animation work, each vignette sharing a different experience of “the war to end all wars” from a soldier’s point of view. 

[video: Three interwoven vignettes of interpretations of “The Owl” by Edward Thomas, “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, and “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae.]

‘Men Marched Asleep’ (2018)

Williamson Museum and Art Gallery, Merseyside, CH43 4UE 

Nov - Dec 2018

Heritage Lottery Funded

The title of the installation takes its inspiration from the fifth line of the Wilfred Owen poem: Dulce et Decorum Est 

…a poem which provides a deeply evocative description of men exhausted by battle but continuing on. It’s a journey-narrative saturated by time-and-toil, regimental history and personal loss during the Great War. This sense of movement is conveyed in parallel by the installation itself as a series of historical objects, personal photographs and artworks created by the local community transport the visitor through an immersive and evocative environment peppered with lines taken from the poetry of Owen alongside a life-size trench.

Serving & former soldiers contributed to a workshop programme alongside members of The Spider Project, a creative arts and well-being recovery community programme. 

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocend tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
{ Wilfred Owen - Oct.1917- Mar.1918 }

Did somebody ordered some angst? :D
Till Queendom Come content, fast forward to allegedly the worst time ever to move for a job experience in France. Pose study, played with some acrylic, discovered that this paper really doesn’t get along with washi tape, shaded in digital.

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a [frozen] sea, I saw him drowning.
If you could hear, [on every ebb,] the blood
Come gargling from the [ice-]corrupted lungs.
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

– modified text from the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, born March 18, 1893, died November 4, 1918. 

Image sources in addition to The Terror(2018): 

[2] Daguerreotype of Lt. John Irving.

[4] Etching of Frederick Schwatka’s 1878-1870 Expedition searching for the remains of Sir John Franklin’s crew on King William Island. 

[6] Engraving of part of the headstone for John Irving’s tomb in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh. 

[7] Mathematics medal inscribed with the name John Irving, discovered beside the grave of an officer by Schwatka’s  Expedition on King William Island. 

[8] Engraving of part of the headstone for John Irving’s tomb in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh, with the inscription “Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori,” a partial Latin quote from the Roman poet Horace, meaning “It is [sweet and] fitting to die for one’s country.” 

queerasfact:

Happy birthday to war poet Wilfred Owen, born on the 18th of March 1893, from a frustrated queer historian.