IT was as profound a literary meeting as there has been in modern times, a meeting of minds which changed poetry and mankind's literary reaction to war.
Now the historic Scottish meeting between Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, two writers whose lives and literary minds were momentarily entwined in Edinburgh in 1917, is to be celebrated in a series of special events in Edinburgh through 2017.
Arranged by the Scottish Poetry Library (SPL), the 100th anniversary of Owen's time in Edinburgh, before he returned to the Western Front and killed in 1918, will be marked by a series of events.
These will include a re-enactment of his arrival at Waverley Station on June 26, a series of panel discussions and lectures, and in August the premiere of a new poem by the Makar Jackie Kay, inspired by the meeting of Owen and Sassoon.
There will also be a special screening of the film Regeneration, the movie adaptation of Pat Barker's acclaimed book of the same name about Owen and Sassoon's time together at the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh.
Dr Neil McLennan, author of a forthcoming book on Owen and Edinburgh, will deliver a Royal Society speech at the Craiglockhart campus of Edinburgh Napier University, and there will be two discussions around Owen and his life and legacy at the SPL in September and November.
The re-enactment of Owen's arrival will see a Great War re-enactor arrive, accompanied by Peter Owen, the poet's nephew, and be met by Edinburgh's Makar, Christine De Luca.
After his arrival, actors in World War One costume will be on Princes Street, collecting money for Poppy Scotland and handing out Owen's poem, Six O'Clock in Princes Street.
Owen was suffering from trauma from his service in the First World War, known as "shell shock", when he was sent to Edinburgh in June 1917.
He was already a poet, but his writing changed dramatically after meeting and becoming friends with Sassoon, also a poet.
Sassoon had been sent to Craiglockhart after making a public declaration, the 'Soldier's Declaration', against the continuation of the war.
Encouraged by Sassoon, in Edinburgh Owen wrote two of his most famous poems, among the best known verse of all war poetry - Anthem for Doomed Youth and Dulce et Decorum Est.
His works were published posthumously, he died on 4 November, 1918, and his other famous poems include Strange Meeting and Insensibility.
Owen wrote Dulce... at Craiglockhart in early October, 1917, and Anthem for Doomed Youth was penned between September and October of the same year, and Sassoon helped Owen revise the lines.
Sassoon survived the war, and died in 1967.
Their meeting was fictionalised, and their interaction with Dr William Rivers, in the Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy.
Colin Waters, of the SPL, said that the "epochal" meeting of Owen and Sassoon should be regarded as important as any literary meeting in history, such as that of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the Lake District in 1800.
He added: "These events are really to underline that this really epochal meeting in literary history happened in Edinburgh, and in one long and sad summer, these two great poets got to know each other, worked together, and changed writing.
"People of Edinburgh should be proud and pleased that it was here that such an event happened in this city.
"Owen was last in Edinburgh on November 4 of that year, and he died a year later, but in that time he wrote so much historic poetry, it was his big year - this is our way of remembering that."
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