19. Queer Poetry in the Not-So-Great War: Siegfried Sassoon
History is Gay
Leigh Pfeffer
4.6 • 536 Ratings
🗓️ 26 November 2018
⏱️ 86 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We've got a special episode for you this time, gayvenclaws! Gretchen is taking care of a family medical emergency, so join Leigh and special guest Hayden Smith as they discuss the famous WWI soldier Siegfried Sassoon. A writer, poet, and novelist known for his anti-jingoist, anti-war poetry, Sassoon was willing to showcase the horrors of the trenches for foot soldiers. It's a tale of love, loss, grief, anger, and healing as we dig into this fascinating fellow and his prolific poetry!
Outline
0:00 – Introduction
4:43 – Main Topic: Anti-War Poet Siegfried Sassoon
6:31 – Socio-Historical Context: the United Kingdom, 1900-1930
16:51 – Socio-Historical Context: WWI and Homosexuality
20:17 – Socio-Historical Context: Changing Masculinity
29:51 – Who were they? Bio Time.
46:46 – Why do we think they're gay?
1:15:37 – Pop Culture Tie-In
1:16:51 – How Gay were They?
1:21:28 – Closing and Where to Find us Online
You can find guest host Hayden Smith's work online on his blog, SealedInInk.com, or check him out on instagram at afterthewaves!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to History is Gay, a podcast that examines the underappreciated and overlooked queer ladies, gents, and gentle enbies that have always been there in the unexplored corners of history, because history has never been as straight as you think. |
| 0:15.9 | Music Hello, folks. Welcome again to another episode of History is Gay. |
| 0:36.6 | I'm Lee, as usual, but today, sadly, we do not have Gretchen, but it's okay because I have a fantastic guest host with us today for our episode on Sigfried Sassoon, who was a poet, a writer, and a soldier of Jewish descent, known for his anti-jingoist World War I poetry, |
| 0:56.9 | and for depicting the horrors of the trenches. |
| 0:59.9 | So today we have an awesome guest named Hayden W. Smith, who is a queer black writer and activist friend of the pod, |
| 1:09.9 | and he really wanted to talk to us about by |
| 1:13.6 | Erasure and also Sick Free to Sassoon. So welcome Hayden. Hi. Hi. Thank you for having me. Thank you |
| 1:20.8 | for being on. This is fun. This is you get to be our, uh, you get to be our first like sub in |
| 1:25.3 | host without Gretchen or me. I know. |
| 1:28.3 | Like, whoa. |
| 1:29.9 | So that I scared Gretchen away, but, uh. |
| 1:33.4 | Oh, no. |
| 1:34.3 | She's just, we're, we're both busy people in, uh, scheduling sometimes is difficult |
| 1:40.0 | between three individuals in a world where we're all like, you know, stuck with jobs and |
| 1:47.0 | capitalism and all those fun things. |
| 1:48.9 | Oh, definitely. |
| 1:49.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:50.2 | No, I totally understand. |
| 1:51.7 | Slaved capitalism as well. |
| 1:53.5 | Yeah. |
| 1:54.2 | No choice. |
| 1:56.6 | Jobs, capitalism, blah. |
... |
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