In your workbook, write down all the words that you associate with the word…

1. Conflict or War poetry • In your workbook, write down all the words that you associate with the word… WAR • As various poems and songs are studied in this unit, add ideas and concepts such as futility and sacrifice that composers have explored.

2. Developing Poetry Skills Stage 5 Students should be able to: • Show an understanding of, and be able to comment on, how poets use literary devices to create images in the reader’s mind • Show an understanding of, and be able to comment on, how the structure and style of a poem can affect the meaning. • Show an understanding of how a poem can tell a story. • Demonstrate knowledge, understanding with supportive textual evidence in their personal responses

3. Poems can interpreted in various ways • When you read a poem, there are a number of ways you can interpret/analyse it. • Examine the following famous war poem to see how it can be ‘read’

4. Suicide in the Trenches I knew a simple soldier boyWho 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. Siegfried Sassoon (1917)

5. What Do You See? What words come to mind?

6. You can look at Images • Focusing on stanza one, what sort of images does the poet try to create? Is the tone positive or negative? • The poet will create an image in your head. • What picture is built in your mind? • What descriptive words are used?(adjectives) • Which is the most powerful image in the poem? Why?

7. You can look at:Structure and Features • The way the poem is laid out on the page. • Are there gaps in the poem? • How long are the stanza’s? • What is the rhyme and rhythm of the poem? • What, if anything, is unusual about the way the poem is written? • 2) What do you think the indentation of the text represents?

8. Images: Literary Devices • To create images, poets will often use the following literary devices: • Simile - is a figure of speech comparing two unlike things, introduced with the word ‘like’ or ‘as’. • Metaphor - comparisons that show how two things that are not alike in most ways are similar in one important way without using ‘like’ or ‘as’. • Personification - giving human traits (qualities, feelings, action, or characteristics) to non-living objects. • Alliteration - using the same consonant sound at the beginning of several words in close proximity. • 3) Look at the poem as a whole. • Are there any literary devices?

9. You can look at:Purpose • What reason(s) did the poet have to write the poem? • What do you think the poem is about? • What was your first reaction to reading the poem? • 4) Who is the poet speaking to in the final stanza? What is the message? Is the tone the same as in stanza 1?

10. Recapping • What devices can a writer use to paint a vivid image in our minds? • How does the physical structure of a poem affect the meaning? • What other things have you learnt today, in terms of ways to analyse a poem? Write a well structured paragraph answering the following question: How does the poet feel about war. What evidence exists in the poem to support your interpretation?