Exhibition of First World War Poet's work launched to mark Armistice Day

The University marked Armistice Day with the opening of an exhibition of the work of First World War poet Joseph Lee.

Ranked alongside Owen, Brooke and Sassoon, Joseph Lee was once regarded as one of Scotland's finest First World War poets. Volumes of his poetry and war memoirs illustrated by his own sketches remain powerfully evocative and - 'composed amid the smoke and din of ... warfare' - are undeniably authentic.

Lee was born in Dundee and worked on the Dundee Advertiser and People's Journal as well as producing and illustrating his own newspapers and magazines such as the City Echo. He served in the Black Watch in the trenches in France and Belgium and had his first volume of poetry published in 1916. He was taken prisoner in 1917 and his journals, with photographs and sketches, vividly record his own experiences. After the war Lee worked as a journalist in London and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art before returning to Dundee where he died in 1949.

The exhibition of items from the University's Archive and Museum collections is being held on two floors of the University: in the Tower Foyer and the Lamb Gallery. It includes papers and illustrations from Lee's journalistic days in Dundee, original poems and diaries from the First World War, and drawings from his time at the Slade School.

The exhibition was opened by Mrs Nancy Blackwood, a great niece of Joseph Lee, and Professor James Calderhead, Vice-Principal of the University.

The exhibition is open Monday-Friday 9:30am-8:00pm and Saturday 9:30am-4:30pm until Thursday 22 December.

"Every bullet has its billet;
Many bullets more than one:
God! Perhaps I killed a mother
When I killed a mother's son."
The Bullet, Joseph Lee, 1916.

Karsruhe Prisoner of War Camp, 1918 by Joseph Lee

watercolour sketch, No Man's Land by Joseph Lee