Mametz Wood - Context

Question 1

Who is this poem written by?

Answer 1

Owen Sheers

Question 2

Owen Sheers

Answer 2

• born in Fiji
• raised in South Wales
• poet, author, playwright and university professor

Question 3

What was Sheers’ work focused on?

Answer 3

• focused on the way people identify with land and country and is interested in loss, separation and the many different borders that people create between themselves

Question 4

When was the poem written?

Answer 4

• written in 2005 - published in the same year in the collection ‘Skirrid Hill’
• when war detritus was still being uncovered in Mametz Wood - were still being found as late as 2016

Question 5

Mametz Wood

Answer 5

• wood in Mametz -> a part of the Somme area in France -> scene of a major battle of the Somme in WW1 in 1916
• British army gained 760,000 additional volunteers within two months of WW1 starting
• men grouped together based on where they had come from
• 38th Welsh Division - had to reclaim Mametz Wood from German forces
• 4000 men dead -> before they could reclaim te Wood, they were shot down by machine guns - eventually successful in capturing Mametz Wood

Question 6

How were the 38th Welsh Division seen?

Answer 6

• as ill-trained
• but they were poorly led but had a poor reputation - ‘told to walk, not run’

Question 7

What is the poem about?

Answer 7

• the poem begins with farmers in France in the present finding bones and skeletons in their fields when they plough the land
• the skeletons and bones are from soldiers who died during WW1
• the poem briefly references the way the soldiers died in battle before returning to the grisly discovery of their skeletons in the present
• this discovery is partly positive - allows the memory of these soldiers to be honoured

Question 8

Which themes are presented in this poem?

Answer 8

• passage of time
• pain and suffering
• death and loss
• effects of war
• nature