Tumult & Tears

The Story of the Great War Through the Eyes and Lives of Its Women Poets

Vivien Newman

• Publisher: Pen & Sword History
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781473881907
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World War I
• Index: History

During the First World War and its immediate aftermath, hundreds of women wrote thousands of poems on multiple themes and for many different purposes. Womens poetry was published, sold (sometimes to raise funds for charities as diverse as Beef Tea for Troops or The Blue Cross Fund for Warhorses), read, preserved, awarded prizes and often critically acclaimed. Tumult and Tears will demonstrate how womens war poetry, like that of their male counterparts, was largely based upon their day-to-day lives and contemporary beliefs. Poems are placed within their wartime context. From war worker to parent; from serving daughter to grieving mother, sweetheart, wife; from writing whilst within earshot of the guns, whilst making the munitions of war, or whilst sitting in relative safety at home, these predominantly amateur, middle-class poets explore, with a few tantalising gaps, nearly every aspect of womens wartime lives, from their newly public often uniformed roles to their sexuality.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 When ‘Pierrot Goes Forward, What of Pierrette?’
• Chapter 2 The Power of the Cross: Religion in Women’s Poetry
• Chapter 3 ‘Lay Your Head on the Earth’s Breast’: Nature in Women’s War Poetry
• Chapter 4 ‘I’ve Worn a Khaki Uniform … Significant Indeed’: Serving Women’s Poetry
• Chapter 5 Giving Sorrows Words: Grief in Women’s Poetry
• Conclusion ‘Whose the harder part?’
• Acknowledgements
• Appendix 1 Biographies of the Poets
• Appendix 2 The Publishers
• Appendix 3 The Birmingham War Poetry Scrapbooks Collection