Poems

Firsthand verses written from the trenches of the First World War by a young soldier who was there. Geoffrey Dearmer's collection captures the raw immediacy of front-line experience: the thunder of artillery, the friendships forged in extremis, the unbearable weight of loss. The Dardanelles and the British Expeditionary Force sections render combat not as heroism but as something more honest - exhausting, terrifying, and strangely beautiful in its brutality. These are poems written by someone who slept in mud, who watched friends die, who found moments of grace amid destruction. The miscellaneous works reveal a poet capable of surprising tenderness, finding birdsong and spring flowers where you'd expect only darkness. This is not romantic war poetry; it is testimony from a generation that paid in blood for its verses.