News at Eleven: Today, there are less than 10,000 troops

in Afghanistan and in Iraq, even at its 2003 peak, deployment of British troops stood at 46,000. In World War I young men were conscribed to the front line in numbers exceeding 5 million. Talents like Wilfred Owen in particular may be said to come along once in a generation--the statistical likelihood of that person going to war today is therefore low.

In any case, if any area of poetry should transcend the art form's unhelpful preoccupation with high vs low style and accessibility vs academia, surely it should be war poetry, where the stakes are too high for both those writing and reading it for anyone to lose out.

from The Huffington Post: Iraq Anniversary: How War Poetry Played A Part In The War In Iraq

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