I’m surprised how many modern people don’t know that the “World War One Poets” were part of a propaganda effort to create sympathy for the losses in the front lines

They were very popular in Britain during the WW1 era but they have all but faded out of popular culture now.<br><br>Shelley, Coleridge and Tennyson were used extensively by the British government to help promote the idea of sacrifice for one’s country, and they were very successful. By the time WW2 came along the government realised they didn’t have any poets who could compete with those three. So they spent a lot of money and resources to promote and encourage young poets to write. The most successful of the bunch were:<br> <br>Alfred Noyes<br>Siegfried Sassoon<br>Rudyard Kipling<br>Wilfred Owen<br>Robert Graves<br>Ivor Novello<br><br>The British government realised that the public were becoming a lot less sympathetic towards the losses of soldiers after the 1915 ship the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat with no warning. Prior to that the general public saw WW1 as a noble and honourable war, fought by the greatest nation on earth against the evil Germans. After the Lusitania it was seen for what it was: a stupid bloody pointless war in which the common soldier would be killed in their thousands in trenches miles from anywhere.<br><br>It was deemed that the poets weren’t helping the war effort any more, and by the 1950’s none of the above poets had any public profile. There was a small resurgence of interest in the 1960’s with the Vietnam War when people were looking for poetry that reflected the horrors of war. But since then the public interest in the “World War One Poets” had all but faded.<br><br>In recent years I’ve noticed an increase in interest in WW1 poetry and I’m hoping that this will help prevent another war.