FICTION ADAPTATION: Poem

Selecting a WWI poem from the booklet that we were given, was a challenge for me at first, as I've found myself on many occasions reading only post-modern poetry, and avoiding reading war genres in general. When I first read "Recalling War" by Robert Graves, I thought of maybe relating it to some greek history, such as the Polytechnic uprising in Athens (1973), as I'm from Greece, and it would be quite a change in the whole interpretation of this poem. Whilst researching the poet, Robert Graves, I actually found out that he was famous for his works in translating Classical Latin and Greek Myths, which I thought (at the time) that it was brilliant, as I could relate this piece with various greek myths and over-dramatise the poem's context into a greek drama. But then I sat down and thought about it again, and didn't really have any solid ideas that I could go through, though I think this idea I had could (in the future) be something I could look into and produce.

I've attached the poem below:

After reading this poem, I felt the need to research everything about it's context and the poet's life & career. Many of the themes present in this poem show nationalism, post-war psychology of the soldiers as well as the transformation between the past and the present.

The poet himself, fought in the war as a soldier, which is a major factor in this poem, as it seems very personal in the way it's written. "Recalling War" is as the title suggests, written about 20 years after the first World War and is about how the war is remembered by the men of his own generation. 

Although WWI left many marks behind, such as amputated arms and legs and blindness to soldiers, the poet suggests that the survivors seem to ignore the symbols as well as the memory of the war itself. So just like the poet, which attempts to set the records straight and criticize the memory- I want to achieve this by bringing the memory (being the past) into our modern day society, the present, and showing how our busy lives have made us ignorant to the past.
How would I do this? Well I've got this idea of taking archive footage possibly from the First World War or a few years later (when the poem was written), and fade into footage of the same places (seen on the footage that I will be taking) in the present day. For example having some footage of a street in the 1920s and then fading in to footage of the same street/location in the present day. But the way I'm going to introduce this, is by going through these images with a person that is recalling war sitting on a bench possibly reading his journal or a younger person reading the actual poem and having these images in his head. Something that inspired me greatly, was a viral video of archive footage that was found a few months ago, which was eye-opening when I first saw it and made me realise how our society has become so ignorant to the past. 
Below I've attached a copy of the video:

"During the 1920s, the cinematographer Claude- Friese Greene, travelled across the UK with his new colour film camera. His trip ended in London, with some of his most stunning images, which were recently revived and restored by the BFI, and shared across social media and video websites."

At the moment, I'm open to any idea that pops in my head for this project, but for now this is it. Hope you enjoyed reading my post and I'll be writing more about my newest ideas soon!

Yours,

I.