Timothy Corsellis

Timothy Corsellis was an English poet and a pilot during World War II. He was born in Eltham, England, and his father died in a plane crash during his childhood. When war broke out in 1939, Corsellis initially registered as a conscientious objector before volunteering for training as a fighter pilot in 1940. After refusing to bomb civilians while on assignment, Corsellis died in a training accident when an aircraft malfunctioned at White Waltham Airfield in England. He was 20 years old.

Corsellis’s work has gained notoriety since its posthumous publication. As writers for the Poetry Society state, “his poems explore the experience of the Blitz and the combined boredom and exhilaration of flight training,” and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography included him in the canon of World War II poets. His work was collected and published in The Unassuming Sky: The Life and Poetry of Timothy Corsellis (2012).