The Municipality of Skyros will host the Rupert Brooke Centenary Poetry Celebrations on April 23 to commemorate the English poet’s life and works. The special event will take place on the island of Skyros, where the poet died on April 23, 1915, during WWI, on a hospital ship off the Greek island; he was buried in an olive grove on the island.

Rupert Brooke (1887 – 1915) was an English neo-Romantic poet whose premature death and idealistic writing contributed to his fame. Inscribed on the grave is Brooke’s most famous poem, The Soldier (1914), after his return from the fall of Antwerp. Although he had experienced the chaos of battle there, and seen the misery of the fleeing refugees, the full horror of the trenches was yet to be realised.