Reconsidering a “Neglected Classic” and Widening the Canon of World War I Poetry: The Song of Tiadatha

Abstract

IF WILFRED OWEN’S DICTUM was “my subject is war and the pity of war,”’1 Owen Rutter’s might well have been “my subject is war and the boredom of war.” His mock-epic poem The Song of Tiadatha deals with the experiences of Tiadatha (a pun on “Tired Arthur”—a young “nut”2 or man about town) who volunteers for the Dudshire Regiment at the start of the Great War, seeing (some) action in France and Salonica before being wounded and returning home to London on leave. It is not well known now; there are no critical editions3 and it has received virtually no critical attention; only one collection of war poetry, Never Such Innocence, anthologises passages from it, describing it as “one of the great neglected classics of the war ... its gentle mockery, its warmth and sympathy, and its ability to produce flashes of sharp savagery make it unique.”4 This article explores Rutter’s poem to put it into the context of his war experiences, to investigate possible reasons why it has been sidelined in the discourse of Great War poetry, and to identify why it should now be reconsidered as a meaningful poetic commentary on the realities of the Great War.