Dear students & readers of this blog,
Last Nov 11 we commemorated the anniversary of the end of World War I, one of the most devastating conflicts in the story of humankind. On such a date, people in Britain celebrate Remembrance Day, to remember those who served and died in the war. The school, and most particularly, the School Library, wants to join the celebrations, by remembering the writers and poets that were involved in the conflict. And we're going to do it in the form of a POETRY READING SESSION next Dec 3. (Please check the school website for more info).
Do you fancy poetry? If not, would you like to discover it?
Before going on to showing you the poems that will be read, you might find this video interesting. It's well-known how afraid we seem to be of poetry. It seems to be something so far from us, so conceptual and difficult to understand. If you watch the video below, you will see that it is not as bad as it seems:
Here are
the poems we are going to read. Take some time to get familiar with them:
TWO FUSILIERS
by Robert Graves.
And have we done with War at
last?
Well, we've been lucky devils both,
And there's no need
of pledge or oath
To bind our lovely friendship fast,
By firmer
stuff
Close bound enough.
By wire and wood and stake we're
bound,
By Fricourt and by Festubert,
By whipping rain, by the
sun's glare,
By all the misery and loud sound,
By a Spring
day,
By Picard clay.
Show me the two so closely bound
As
we, by the red bond of blood,
By friendship, blossoming from
mud,
By Death: we faced him, and we found
Beauty in Death,
In
dead men breath.
SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES
by Siegfried Sassoon
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty
joy,
Slept soundly through the
lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the
lark.
In winter trenches, cowed
and glum,
With crumps and lice and
lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his
brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with
kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads
march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll
never know
The hell where youth and
laughter go.
THE SOLDIER
by Rupert Brooke
If I should die, think only
this of me:
That there's some corner of
a foreign field
That is for ever England.
There shall be
In that rich earth a richer
dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore,
shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to
love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's,
breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest
by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all
evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind,
no less
Gives somewhere back the
thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds;
dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of
friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an
English heaven.
This is how the Tower of London looked like until not very long ago.
As you can see, its moat was flooded with ceramic poppies. As you may know, the
poppy is the symbol of the British Legion, and people wear one on Remembrance Day to remember those who died to guarantee freedom and democracy in the world. If you want to learn more, please click
here.
For advanced students, here you have the chance to practise your listening comprehension skills but watching this and answering the questions below:
Questions:
1. Why did this initiative start?
2. When did this idea start?
3. How much did they collect last year?
4. How many collectors do they have?
5. According to the two male interviewees, what does poppy symbolize?
For the key, click
here.
(Thanks to Laura Parrilla Gómez, from EOI Constantina, for sending this to me!!)
Lest we forget!
