Author(s): Harry Ricketts

Poetry

"Strange Meetings provides a highly original account of the War Poets of 1914 -1919, written through a series of actual encounters, or near-encounters, from Siegfried Sassoon's first, blushing meeting with Rupert Brooke over kidneys and bacon at Eddie Marsh's breakfasts before the war, through famous moments like Sassoon's encouragement of Owen when are both in hospital at the same time, on to the poignant meeting between Edward Thomas's widow and Ivor Gurney in 1932, and the last, strange lunch and longish talk'of Sassoon and David Jones in 1964, half a century after the great war began. Among the other poets and writers we encounter are Vera Brittain and Edward Leighton, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Nicols and Edmund Blunden. Ricketts's unusual approach allows him to follow their relationships, marking their responses to each other's work and showing how these affected their own poetry - one potent strand, for example, is the profound influence of Brooke, both as a model to follow and a burden to reject.The stories become intensely personal and vivid we come to know each of the poets, their family and intellectual backgrounds and their very different personalitie