Ivor Gurney

1. Ivor Gurney The Target

2. Ivor Bertie Gurney (28 August 1890 – 26 December 1937) was an Englishcomposer and poet. • On 11 November 1985, Gurney was among 16 Great War Poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's • The inscription on the stone was written by a fellow Great War poet, Wilfred Owen. It reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."[ • A memorial to Gurney was erected in 2009 near Ypres, close to the spot where he was the victim of a mustard gas attack in 1917.

3. He was writing the poems for what would become his first book Severn and Somme when he was wounded in the shoulder in April 1917. • He recovered and returned to battle, still working on his book . • Gurney was gassed in September the same year and sent to the Edinburgh War Hospital where he met and fell in love with a nurse, Annie Nelson Drummond, but the relationship later failed. • After his release from hospital he was posted to a mining village in Northumberland, where he wrote poems. • In March 1918, Gurney suffered a serious breakdown triggered in part by the failure of his relationship with Drummond, combined with other factors in his life. • He was hospitalized. He slowly regained some of his emotional stability and in October was honourably discharged from the army. • Gurney has often been described as a victim of shell shock or PTSD from the gas attack. However, others agrue Gurney suffered from bipolar disorder or manic-depressive illness.