Good morning everyone. I’m Sherman from 6S. I would like to share a poetry book called Poetry of the First World War published by Collector’s Poetry Library with all of you. As I’m very into poetry, I’ve read quite a number of books about it. This is one of the books that I particularly like. It is a collection of poems about the First World War, most of them written by soldiers, and some others written by families of soldiers and people suffered from the war.

There’re different kinds of materials about wars such as books, documentaries, movies that tell us how much pain can be brought by a war. But none of them can bring me such a deep feeling like Poetry of the First World War. There’re no moving pictures, no colourful photos, no sounds of crying, but only plain words. However, the power of words is so strong .The image formed in my brain is so clear that I know how miserable and hopeless the writers were. Soldiers watched their companions fell down one by one, knowing themselves were going to join the dead. They thought about their loves left in their homeland, wondering when they could return or if they could not return at all. At the same time, the people stayed in the homeland worried about their relatives who went to fight in the front. And citizens of the country hoped to have a peaceful life deadly. The tragedies I read in the book appear so real. I have a strong hatred towards wars. The leaders of some countries should read this book so they can see the true image of wars and show some sympathy.

It is worth learning the way the poets write in the book. They did not purposely arrange the words and sentences. They did not exaggerate. They just wrote what they saw by their eyes and what they felt and thought from their hearts. The poems written in this way are very impressive and influential. The book gives me new ideas of how to write a poem.