Bertram Warr

Bertram Warr (December 7, 1917 - April 3, 1943) was an English poet born in Canada.

Life
He was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, and educated at the University of Toronto Extension Department, following which he worked in menial jobs in Toronto and Muskoka. In 1938 he hitchhiked to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the following year stowed away on an ocean liner to England. Arriving in London, he worked at a variety of odd jobs while studying informally at the University of London, where he became a socialist and a pacifist.

In 1941 Favil Press published Yet a Little Onward, a chapbook of 14 poems by Warr in its Resurgam Younger Poets Series. The book attracted favourable attention from Robert Graves and [[G.S. Fraser.

Warr was conscripted to fight in World War II in 1941, and served in the Royal Air Force. He was shot down over Essen in 1943.

Writing
The 'Dictionary of Literary Biography' says that Warr's war poems "are without the exhilaration of those of Rupert Brooke ... the irony and understatement of Robert Graves, the rich symbolic transmutations of Isaac Rosenberg, the vivid documentations of Edmund Blunden and Wilfred Owen, and the satirical finesse of Siegfried Sassoon. They are, however, faithful representations of the actuality of war and London life under duress, and their various free forms project a sincere, straightforward view."

Recognition
Warr's poems were included in the 1942 anthology Poems of This War (Cambridge). When he died, the Times Literary Supplement'' printed an obituary. A.J.M. Smith included his poetry in the second and third editions of the Book of Canadian Poetry. The October 945 issue of the literary magazine Contemporary Verse was a tribute issue to Warr, featuring several of his poems and a critical article by editor Alan Crawley.

Publications

 * Yet a Little Onwards. London: Favil Press, 1941.
 * The Collected Poems of Bertram Warr: Acknowledgment to Life (edited by Leo Gasparini; preface by Earle Birney). Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1970.