UN Ambassadors remember WWI through poetry

(Vatican Radio) U.N. ambassadors from 14 countries whose soldiers fought in World War I have recorded poems about the conflict written by their best-known poets. Britain's U.N. Mission opened the exhibition at U.N. headquarters yesterday to coincide with the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, Britain's entry into the war.

It includes posters of the poets and their poems, and a code that can be scanned with smart phones to hear the ambassadors from the onetime warring countries reading their works.

British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, read Wilfred Owen's ``Dulce Et Decorum Est, while U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power read Alan Seeger's ``I Have a Rendezvous With Death.''

German Ambassador Harald Braun read George Trakl's ``Grodele'' and Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkinread Nikolay Gumilev's ``Assault.''

Jeremy Dibble is Professor of Music at Durham University in the UK. He spoke to Lydia O’Kane about this period in history for both musicians and poets. Listen

“Certainly in my own country the war poets are well known names, people like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen and I think they have become particularly well known on the back of really a wave of pacifism and a reaction to the First World War in particular”…

He goes on to say that due to changing attitudes regarding how the war was played on “some of the composers who were involved in the First World War are becoming better known.

Also represented at the exhibition are New Zealand, Turkey, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Austria, South Africa, India and Serbia are also represented in the exhibition.