The chapter recovers and investigates a substantial body of poems from undivided India composed during 1914–1918 and how such a corpus challenges conventional Anglo-centric understandings of the term 'First World War poetry'. Showcasing the remarkable range and richness of war poetry written in Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, and English, the chapter examines some of their historical and formal complexities, including their oral and aural dimensions; in the absence of testimonies, such poetry fills in the gaps left by history. Starting with civilian verse and songs – elite and subaltern, written and spoken, pro-war and anti-war, direct, oblique or diffuse - I propose the idea of a war 'poetics' rather than ‘poetry’ from combatant men and village women who were often non-literate but highly literary. I conclude with readings of the 'war poems' of Rabindranath Tagore, Muhammed Iqbal and Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national poets of the future India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh respectively.