Remembrance Week 1

This is the first of a series of posts over the coming week leading up to Armistice Day on November 11th. Our Shakespeare Wordles in the coming week also concentrate on war plays, starting today with Henry IV, Part I.

This morning in Chapel, Mr Girdham introduced and talked about four poems on the subject of war:- Siegfried Sassoon's 'Attack' (read out by Hamish Law, one of our semi-finalists in the Poetry Aloud competition this year), Wislawa Szymborska's 'The Terrorist, He's Watching' (read by Anna Traill, Second Prefect), Michael Longley's 'Ceasefire' (which is on the Leaving Cert course, and was read by Mr Jameson), and Wilfred Owen's 'The Send-Off'.

Today is the 91st anniversary of Owen's death. We've recommended previously Oxford University's superb First World War Poetry Digital Archive. Here, you can look at manuscript versions of Owen's poetry (Sassoon is 'coming soon'), such as this one of 'The Send-Off'.

Szymborska won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, and her poem is the latest Poem of the Week, being displayed around the College. Also see the Poetry Foundation site (more on this excellent resource for teachers in a day or two).

Hear Michael Longley himself read 'Ceasefire' on the Poetry Archive site here.

(This is the 800th post since we started this blog in July 2006).