Trauma, Primitivism and the First World War

Buried alive in April 1918, during the massive German offensive on the Western front, Frank Prewett clawed his way back to life and to poetry. He breathed the war into his verse and into his fragmented post-war identities. This book provides a poignant portrait of a life lived in the shadow of the trenches and marked indelibly by the performative language of shell shock. -- Jay Winter, Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University, USA
Joy Porter’s Primitivism uses the little-known Canadian poet, Frank Prewett, as a means to explore the experience and aftermath of the First War from a refreshingly different perspective. It’s especially fascinating to learn more about the remarkable W.H. Rivers and his colleague Henry Head, figures well-known to admirers of Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy. Well researched and thoughtfully written, Porter’s book enlarges our understanding of the work done by Rivers and his team at Craiglockhart, while it adds much intriguing new detail to the larger social world in which the handsome Prewett played an intriguingly ambivalent role -- Miranda Seymour, Author of Robert Graves: Life on the Edge (Simon & Schuster, 1995) and Ottoline Morrell: Life on the Grand Scale (Faber & Faber, 1992)
A brilliant account of Prewett’s remarkable and intriguing story which opens many questions about identity and belonging, about power and manipulation in the creation of public reputation, and about the fatal risk of losing yourself to what other people want you to be -- Paul O’Prey, Author of Counter-Wave: The Poetry of Rescue in the First World War (Dare-Gale, 2018)
Trauma, Primitivism and the First World War is an engrossing read ... It offers a rare insight into the long reach of trauma and presents the story of a complicated figure through a lens that pairs decidedly contemporary anecdotes with detailed evidence. * Literary Review of Canada *