The English Department of St Columba's College, Whitechurch, Dublin 16, Ireland. Pupils' writing, news, poems, drama, essays, podcasts, book recommendations, language, edtech ... and more. Since 2006.
Here's the first of a series of poems written by TY pupils after a recent poetry module in on 'the image in art'. Click here for Ms Smith's introduction to the module. This poem, by Thomas Emmet, was written in response to Pablo Picasso's painting 'The Old Guitarist':-
The Old Guitarist, by Thomas Emmet
The Spanish guitar hangs From his crumpled, haggard frame. His deathly thin arms stretch across it, strumming. Each note a clawing testimony, To his need for money, food, and life.
It wasn’t always like this. Once, there was a home, Once, there was a family. It was debt that ate These things, stole them away.
So now he sits, Strumming the shadow of what he was.
Kate Boyd Crotty of Transition Year was awarded a Commendation for her Extended Essay on Childhood in three novels - John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Michelle Magorian's Goodnight Mr Tom and How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff.
Kate writes :- For my extended essay, I chose the theme of Childhood. I chose this topic because I was very interested in it and I had recently read many novels that I thought would be good to compare. I didn’t want to choose a subject that I would get bored of easily or one that I would end up hating when I was working on it. Each has a similar background of war and the changes that come with it but they all have their own unique inner-stories as well. The main character of each book is a child or young person, in one a teenage girl and two 9-year old boys in the others.
The 44th Poem of the Week is Sheenagh Pugh's 'Sometimes'. Click here for Pugh's own rather exasperated comments on 'the dreaded Sometimes', where she gives permission to publish it on blogs, but also writes:-
It was originally written about a sportsman who had a drug problem and it expressed the hope that he might eventually get over it - because things do go right sometimes, but not very often... But it isn't anywhere near skilful or subtle enough and I would cheerfully disown it, if people didn't now and then write to me saying it had helped them. By the way, you might also care to know that I originally wrote "the sun will sometimes melt a field of snow" (the sportsman's drug of choice was cocaine). But I mistyped "sorrow" for "snow" and then decided I liked that better. I believe in letting the keyboard join in the creative process now and then.
In her FAQs, she says, in answer to the question 'Why do you hate Sometimes so much?'
I think most people read it wrong. When read carefully, it says sometimes things go right, but not that often, and usually only when people make some kind of effort in that direction. So it isn't blithely and unreasonably optimistic. But a lot of people read it that way, which means I didn't write it well enough - the writer can always make the readers see what he wants them to if he does the job right. Also I know, because language is my job, that I have written poems in which the use of language is simply a lot more interesting and imaginative than it is there. So it bugs me now and then that this is the only one a lot of people think I've ever written. Same as Jenny Joseph is fed up of "Warning", which is really quite slight in comparison with many of hers but again is the one she is known by. I'm not letting "Sometimes" be printed any more except for some charitable purposes and in particular I won't let it be used by exam boards, which should make some of you happy!
There's plenty for classroom discussion in her response ... and her own blog is here.
'Sometimes'
Sometimes things don’t go, after all, from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail. Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war, elect an honest man, decide they care enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor. Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best intentions do not go amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to. The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.
Below, Pugh reads 'Webcam Sonnet no 4: Now' (2008).
Part of this term’s work programme in Form I English has been preparation for our 2nd Annual Form I Public Speaking Competition. Pupils worked in small groups during class time developing ideas for their speeches and practising their delivery in these less daunting groups. This year there are three sets in Form I so it was decided to have heats on a set basis with three finalists going forward from each. There was a healthy breadth of topics chosen by speech makers including: Candyfloss, Ancient Persian Weaponry, Transport 21, Easter, Fire Extinguishers, Flimsy Excuses, Kings of Leon, Ferreting…the list goes on!
Participants were urged to engage their audience by maintaining eye contact, with as little reliance on flash cards as possible also seen as a positive feature. It was suggested also that a good speech should start strongly, be well researched and might include personal anecdote, variation in pace and volume, humour (if appropriate) and a strong conclusion. Overall the heats were impressive and threw up some difficult choices for Mr Jameson and Mr. Swift.
The nine finalists were: Brendan Dickerson (Degradation of the Rain Forests), Harry Morris (Annoying Sisters), Harry Johnson (Bob Marley), Oliver Glenn-Craigie (Cows), Matt Brooke (Man’s Best Friend – Dogs), Dearbhala Gernon (Life on the Move), Sadbh Sheeran (Being from the Bog), Molly Dunne (My Brother) and Alexandra Owens (Alex was out of school unwell for the week prior to the final so didn’t participate).
We all gathered in Blackburn classroom on the Friday before Exodus. Thanks are due to Mr. Brett who sacrificed a Latin lesson to facilitate bringing all three sets together. Thanks are due to him all the more as he agreed to be an impartial adjudicator for the final – a perfect choice. He praised the overall quality of the speeches and picked out positive aspects from each contributor. In the end he congratulated Sadbh Sheeran as winner for her confident and engaging delivery on her affection for Donegal and its boglands, the place she calls home.
We resume term today, with two and a half weeks until half-term.
At the end of last term, Miriam Poulton in IV form wrote an essay in her exam under the title 'The Day of the Funeral'. It starts:-
I remember the day of my grandmother’s death as being a bad day for two reasons. One, because my nana died and two, because I had to get braces that afternoon.
But in a strange way, the day of the funeral is almost a happy memory, a day when our family as a whole seemed content, at peace as we knew Nana now was.
I wish I could say she was a fantastic woman who was famous or beautiful or did something extraordinary in her time. And maybe she was, and maybe she did, but I just remember little old Peggy Noble, with grey old lady curls and blue eyes hidden behind thick windowpanes of glasses, who sat in her favourite chair every afternoon to watch Countdown and always smelt of talcum powder.
Read the whole of Miriam's evocative and funny story here.
In her Transition Year Extended Essay, Olivia Plunket wrote about the theme of childhood in three novels - Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, Robert Swindells's Abomination, and Jenny Downham's Before I Die. Olivia writes:-
When we think of children, the first thing that comes to our minds is innocence and naivety. A child is the purest form of life on this planet, its faultless heart isn’t poisoned by the cruel realities of life, and it is always true to itself and isn’t bothered by what people think of it. A child can bring so much happiness into someone’s life. Parents can return to their childhood as they watch their own child grow and strengthen before their very eyes.
I chose the theme childhood because after reading How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, I gained a completely different perspective on my own life as well as the lives of those around me. I know that my three I have chosen are fictional, but I also know that some of the things the children in these book have to go through, happen in real life. To me no childhood is perfect. No child is the same, each one is unique, they all see the world differently. This is ironic because children of a certain age all try to be the same, look the same, act the same, but as they grow up they’ll realise that no clothes, or attitude can change who you are. When we grow old and weary, we will all look back at our childhoods, and we will see no faults or flaws, we will see the ecstasy and bliss we got out of it, and we’ll wonder why we wasted it wanting to grow up. Childhood can be torn apart by love or war, it can also be uplifted to the heavens, but it will never be appreciated in its time because when you are a child you won’t appreciate the freedom of it, because you will never have it taken away from you.
I chose these books because I believe that they all explore the depths of
childhood in very different ways. This is what I believe to be the most important thing and what will allow me to take you into these books on the journeys which are so irreplaceable and show you how much they really mean to those who experience them.
Read Olivia's full impressive comparative essay here.
(we're now on a weekend Exodus, returning on Tuesday morning).
As last year, some of our Transition Year are taking part currently in the Tenderfoot programme at the Civic Theatre in Tallaght, organised by the Storytellers' Theatre Company. They are currently preparing for performances on Thursday 29th, Friday 30th and Saturday 31st January.
Here, Sophie Millar, one of our participants, writes about the experience:-
We arrive in the Civic and have a warm-up session to wake us up. This has us disgracing the world of ballet trying to touch our toes, or reminiscing about primary school days by playing musical chairs or chasing! After our hour of ‘fun’ we head off into our own sections of the theatre, either to rehearsals, set design, or costume. I’m in the costume department and so spend my day looking for inspiration in magazines, making lists, or shopping! This week we have been searching through possibly every charity shop in Dublin trying to fit all our requirements into our budget. It’s important that every detail is looked after to create each character’s individual image, from nail polish and earrings to bowling shirts and party dresses…
The whole project at Tenderfoot is such a great opportunity and experience, it’s hard not to love the theatre world once you’re in.
Other Columbans taking part are : Acting - Georgie Wilson, Sean Ralston, Virginia Peck. Set Design - Harry Brooke. Costume Design - Steffan Davies.
Our entry to this year's St Andrew's One Act Drama Festival is Dorothy Parker's two-hander, Here We Are. It is being directed by Mr Peter McCarthy, and 'He' is being played by Michael McBurney, 'She' by Gina Mirow. More in coming weeks. Click here for the Dorothy Parker Society.
'The Dead' is the 43rd Poem of the Week (posted around the school and read/discussed in English classes), and the second by former American Poet Laureate Billy Collins, following 'Walking Across the Atlantic' in November 2007. Below, Collins reads his own poem, with an animation from the Billy Collins Action Poetry website.
Continuing our series of fine Transition Year Extended Essays, which were completed at the end of last term, here is Sophie Millar's essay on three books which deal with the Jewish Holocaust in the Second World War. She writes :-
I have chosen the theme of survival and the Holocaust. The three books I’ve chosen to study are The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (John Boyne), In my Hands (Irene Gut Opdyke), and If This Is A Man (Primo Levi). They are linked together by World War Two but connected most strongly by the subject of the Holocaust. Through reading each book they inevitable provoke questions about the “Jewish Solution”, and you find yourself wanting and needing an answer. These events are historical, in the past, and I am glad for that. However, it is said that we should try to understand our past. I want, if possible, to discover some morality, some understanding of the Holocaust, and through these books try to find, and explain, an answer.
'Holocaust' comes from the Greek, meaning ‘completely burnt’ and is in general the term used for the mass planned extermination of about six million Jews during the Second World War by the Nazis led by Adolf Hitler. Am I supposed to understand and make sense of this? I don’t know, but that’s why I titled this project ‘To Decipher’, meaning to try and make sense of the senseless.
In each book there are survivors, and those that don’t survive, or in other words Sommersi ei Salvati (The Drowned and the Saved, another book by Levi). I want to focus and see what allowed the survivors to be saved, and the drowned to drown. What were the environments, so to speak. For this I will look at innocence and childhood, loneliness and other aspects of what made the books contain their stories.I want to examine also the guilt and the path to acceptance, if present, and their overcoming and returning to life after the War ends.
Here's a photo album of pictures of the boards displaying our Christmas Past 'Everyday Writes' project, currently in the Library, as mentioned last Friday:-
Tonight, the Shakespeare Society has its outing to the Classic Stage Ireland production of The Winter's Tale in the Cube (Project Arts Centre). Go to last Wednesday's post for a review, and comments/reviews from the Irish Independent, RTE, the Sunday Business Post, the Irish Times and the Sunday Times.
The Shakespeare Society always grabs a chance to see any available productions in Dublin. The next planned expedition is to the Abbey Theatre's Comedy of Errors at the start of next term, directed by Jason Byrne.
Last term Transition Year pupil Sope Anthony-Ojolola received a Distinction for her Extended Essay. She writes:-
Love is the main topic for all three of the books I have chosen for this essay, and many different types are portrayed in many different ways. The books I have chosen are Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. I think that these books really taught me a lot about just how much of an impact love has made on life in general and they were all brilliant and gripping in completely different ways. The three authors all had completely different styles of writing, but they each made them work in their own specific way.
Relationships, bonds, love, and most importantly, trust, all intertwine in all three of these books in such amazing and clever ways. All these heroes and heroines show us that the world is all based around love and that even though at some point we all wish that it was a much better place, it could also be much worse. All these different relationships have made me think about how complicated relationships between people can actually be, but they all seem to be worth it at the end of the books. I hope I’ll be able to explain to you today what all these books have shown me about life and, of course, about love.
Last term, on Tuesday 9th December, we had our first ever Everybody Writes day, with everyone in the school (pupils and many staff) writing briefly on the subject 'Christmas Past'. We blogged some of these in the following days.
Now, for the next week or so, we are displaying those pieces on large boards all over our Library. They're striking-looking, and visitors to the Library are drawn to them. Pictured above, a Wordle of all the words in the pieces (click on it for a closer look).
Last term we mentioned Cliff Yates's fine book Jumpstart: poetry in the secondary school. Here's a short writing exercise by Eleanor Dolphin of II form, which was prompted by the book. This was was written in class during a ten minute 'led' writing task. The leader prompts with a 'walk through', giving pupils about two minutes to write about each observation: a room, a piece of furniture, a newspaper, the newspaper's date, a photograph, and so on. It's a simple task that allows each pupil to write with imaginative scope minus the 'How do I start?' anxiety and can be a useful warm-up exercise for writing compositions narrated in first person.
As soon as I stepped into the room I knew things were all wrong. Therewas a table stuck to the ceiling. What looked like strawberry jam was spattered across the walls. Even as I spoke a knife that was previously stuck to the table sliced through the floorboards with a crashing thud, and the table followed with a little more gusto.
I circled the now divided table; it had been a popular type in the 1600s and hadonce been cloaked by a frilly lace table cloth. On the floor beside it lay an old, crinkly, yellow newspaper. I saw that the date was 15th December 15th 1898. On the left hand side was an intriguing photograph of an old woman climbing a tree to save her cat. Looking at the woman I would hazard a guess that she was one hundred and three years old.
Lurking in the shadows behind me I saw that an odd man was there, a sort of pirate-parrot-spider hybrid. He looked like a pirate Medusa with feathery wings. Looking at the photo in the paper again, I saw that the same man behind me had killed that woman and her cat a few days afterwards. That would mean that this man was over a hundred years old. He had been tried, and had admitted that he had killed her purposely with a steamroller because she had stolen his cat.
"I've been waiting a long time for you", he rasped. As I looked around the door was locking itself.
An interesting use of linguistic analysis: the boffins at GenderAnalyzer have created a site which 'uses Artificial Intelligence to determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman'. On running SCC English through it, this was the message:-
We guess http://www.sccenglish.ie is written by a woman (50%); however it's quite gender neutral.
Since this is an equal opportunities group blog, we're quite pleased with this interesting result.
We took the liberty of also checking on our Science colleagues, and this is the result from the Frog Blog :-
We think http://blog.sccscience.com/ is written by a man (61%).
On Monday a group of senior pupils will be going to the Classic Stage Ireland production of Shakespeare's late 'romance' The Winter's Tale at the Cube in the Project Arts Centre. Mr Girdham will give a short introduction to the play in Adare on Friday evening.
This play of strange juxtapositions (captured in the double posters of Leontes and Autolycus) is not produced often, and so is well worth catching. The intensity of the opening Act (Othello re-written as Greek tragedy) comes across particularly well in the small Cube space, notably in Chris Heaney's performance as King Leontes of Sicily. Unlike Othello's, this jealousy explodes from nowhere, and is thus a different challenge for the actor, but Heaney certainly gets across his character's catastrophic disintegration. Audrey McCoy also expresses effectively his wife Hermione's bewilderment and, at the end of the play, her tender love (the famously extraordinary restoration scene is genuinely moving).
There is also a solid performance by Neil Hogan as Camillo and a strong one by Lesa Thurman as Paulina, Hermione's friend and saviour. The only real false note is Andy Blaikie's frantic and over-insistent clowning as Autolycus; less can be more in acting. Andy Hinds is the director, and a few minor glitches will no doubt be ironed out as the run progresses.
The production is reviewed in today's Irish Independent by Colin Murphy here. He concludes:-
The production is long, at three hours, and not always clear. But Hinds captures something of the ethereal strangeness in it, and that is appropriate on this winter's night. James McMahon reviews it for RTE here, and concludes that it is :- a terrific success and, while the play has been considered one of Shakespeare's 'problem plays' (both halves seemingly at odds with each other), nothing appeared problematic in this production, with the ensemble completely at ease at all times. One could think of worse ways to wile away a winter's evening.
Added 19.01.09 - In the Sunday Times yesterday, Declan Burke was less impressed, writing that the first three acts are well executed, Heaney's charged intensity rendering Leontes's derangement plausible. But the shift from impending tragedy to bliss in the final two acts appears to catch out the director, Andy Hinds. The choreography is crude, poor timing ruins too many comic lines, and only Lesa Thurman, as Hermione's friend and the tale's conscience, Paulina, successfully bridges the switch in tone with a compelling performance.
Added 20.01.09- In the Sunday Business Post review, Sara Keating calls it a clear vision of this neglected drama in (an) intelligent, gripping and hugely entertaining production of the play.
Added 22.01.09-
In today's Irish Times review, Gerry Colgan writes that the fifth annual Shakespeare production by Classic Stage Ireland, directed as always by Andy Hinds, is well up to the standards the company has set for itself. It is a no-frills interpretation in which the characters are sharply etched and the verse dialogue is spoken with precision; a traditional homage to the author. The acting is controlled and persuasive, rising to scale dramatic peaks as required.
The first Poem of the Week of 2009 is by far the oldest one so far. It's Kevin Crossley-Holland's translation of Riddle 23 from The Exeter Book. His version is here, and the original with a more literal translation can be read here, together with the solution.
Some screenshots of the manuscript can be seen here.
The College site, which has been completely redesigned over recent months by Adam Green of Bristlebird, now has detailed descriptions of many subject departments (all will be online before long). Visitors to SCC English will be already be familiar with our Department, but for those interested you can read an overview here.
The II form suggested reading list (leading on to their book report) is now on the Library computer, and can also be accessed here and under Department Documents in the sidebar. There are 31 books listed, under the categories Family, Fantasy/Adventure, Bereavement and Friendship, First Love/Growing Pains, War and Conflict, Historical Adventure, Young People's Struggles, and Animals.
Among the recommended books are Irish novels from O'Brien Press: Something Invisible, by Siobhan Parkinson, and Aubrey Flegg's The Cinnamon Tree (the O'Brien site also has a teaching guide for this). There are paragraphs on each book on the list itself.
A past contributor to SCC English, Old Columban Lewis Mathews, is now blogging on his experiences travelling and working on a newspaper in India. You can follow his experiences here.
Today we start the second round of our modules in our Transition Year Course. There are four of these, and they give a chance for pupils to experience a topic for a week taught by a different teacher. This year, they are: Geoffrey Chaucer and the history of the English language; W.B. Yeats; a film module; and a new module taught by Ms Smith on 'Poetry and the Image', which she describes in this post:-
This Transition Year module aims to explore the link between poetry and painting. Since as far back as we can trace there has been a lively dialogue between the two art forms. Anyone who has read poetry will know that the creation of vivid images in the mind’s eye is one of the wonderful effects of this activity. Many famous painters have gone one step further and realised their interpretation of a poem on canvas. As well as going from word to image we look at the reverse. When one looks at a painting (a somewhat restricted, framed world) most are compelled to flesh out the story; what could be going on here? Who is this dark figure on the left? Why do these bright yellow sunflowers seem sinister? Writers are often drawn to translate the image back into words in their purest form; poetry.
At the end of the module students compose a poem of their own inspired by an image that fascinates them. Some forms of poetry suit particular images very well, capturing the essence of the painting. For instance, Igor Verkhovskiy has written a villanelle, an almost cyclical form of poetry based on rhyme and repetition. He was inspired by Pieter Bruegel’s 1563 painting of the spiralling tower of Babel.
(This poem can be read in today's other post here).
The images used in the course can be accessed by clicking on the links in the following list, followed by the relevant poems:-
This villanelle was written by TY pupil Igor Verkhovskiy, inspired by Pieter Bruegel’s 1563 painting of the spiralling tower of Babel (left), as a result of the first module in our TY rota, which is explained by teacher Ms Smith in today's other post here. (Currently there is a fine exhibition at the British Museum called 'Babylon', previously at the Pergamon in Berlin, which examines the many uses of the Babylon story in Western art over the centuries - see the Guardian clip at the bottom of this page).
'The Tower of Babel', by Igor Verkhovskiy
How much pain did the tower take? Was it a prison that gave them the taste? And how many lives did that fire bake?
This Giant tower, the ruler’s make, Walls swallow blood like a blunt paste, How much pain did the tower take?
The gods send an omen, for people’s sake, But no tools were dropped, it all went to waste. How many lives did that fire bake?
Warships and armies come to the lake, Is it war, or is that not the case? How much pain did the tower take?
Corpses and souls the tower will take, And out of the tower people are chased. How many lives will that tower take?
Emotions in this hell are never fake, Where souls and bodies burn with haste. How much pain did the tower take? And how many lives did that fire bake?
At the end of last term, Miriam Poulton was awarded a Commendation for her fine Extended Essay on the theme of location/setting in three different novels - A Room with a View by E.M. Forster, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows.
Miriam writes : -
One of the things all novels have in common is that they all have a setting, they all take place somewhere and sometime. In some books the setting is rich in detail and beautiful, in others it is simply the backdrop for the story. However, it is not the setting that I plan on looking at. Instead, I want to investigate something that can affect real life as well as that of characters in novels. Location can affect people’s moods and actions often to a very great extent and I thought it would be interesting to see how this happens in novels as well.
I have studied the theme of location in three very different novels. One takes place for the first half around the Italian city of Florence and for the second part a sleepy English village. My next book takes place just after the Second World War, in a London that is slowly rebuilding itself and a Guernsey that is recovering from occupation by the Germans. My third book takes place in war-torn Kabul, a city in Afghanistan. In each of these, the setting plays a large part in the story, it is affected by events and has an impact on characters. Often, a character’s home has the most profound effect on them, whether their home is where they have lived their whole life or a place they are only just discovering.
Read Miriam's full essay on these three novels here.
The Hilary Term starts today, ending on Friday 27th March. Ahead of us on the English front are: the Junior Play, Romeo and Juliet; the Senior and Junior English Prizes; the Peter Dix Memorial and Junior Poetry Prizes; World Book Day; TY Work Portfolio pieces; the Mock Leaving and Junior Certificate exams; and plenty more. Starting tomorrow, we'll also be catching up with the considerable amount of excellent essay work done near the end of last term.
Our friend Professor Terry Dolan returned to the Meaning of Words slot on Sean Moncrieff's afternoon Newstalk Radio show today, to a warm public welcome. Terry suffered a stroke in February 2008, and has been recuperating since. He talked to Sean Moncrieff about this experience, and also about the origins of medical words.
We're looking forward to welcoming Terry back to St Columba's sometime this term; he's been visiting the College and talking to pupils about such topics as Geoffrey Chaucer, Hiberno-English and 'bad' language for 35 years - see previous reports on his visits in 2007and 2006.
Each year Lake Superior State University publishes its "List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness". This year, 'green', 'carbon footprint', and 'maverick' feature, as well as 'iconic'. There's also the phrase 'desperate search' for something that can't be found, as opposed to, simply, 'search'. You can express your own linguistic irritations by adding your own words or phrase here.
For a non-bookish Presidency (this is about to change), George W. Bush's administration has generated an enormous amount of literature, much of it of course political (such as Bob Woodward's war analyses), some of it more personal (such as Jacob Weisberg's The Bush Tragedy). One of the most oblique ways into the White House, however, is Curtis Sittenfeld's recent American Wife, a fictionalisation of the life of Laura Bush through the figure of Alice Blackwell.
This is another novel which has a scope and ambition which seem distinctively American. It's a tremendously readable 550 pages, with only a few longueurs. A lot of discussion of the novel has focussed, inevitably but reductively, on the connections with Laura Bush, but there are so many varied pleasures in its sweep that this may be an unsatisfactory and distracting way to approach it.
Sittenfeld's website is here, with plenty of links to interviews and reviews.
Here's the first of a series of poems written by TY pupils after a recent poetry module in on 'the image in art'. Click here for Ms Smith's introduction to the module. This poem, by Thomas Emmet, was written in response to Pablo Picasso's painting 'The Old Guitarist':-
