Introduction

Welcome to this site, designed especially for the BBHS year 11 Standard English class. You will find 10 poems that have been carefully selected for you. The poems have been written by various poets and were written from the 19th to 21st century. The style, form and language will shape your meaning of relevant issues and themes surrounding war.

War poetry is an expression of the traumatic, devastating and unstoppable incidents that have occurred over time on an international level. Poets explore the themes of loss, identity, love, family, loyalty, betrayal, culture, duty, religion and commemoration. Throughout the poems selected for your anthology these themes are represented through the poets’ choice of language, syntax and structure. The diverse range of poems allows you to understand the effects of war on society. The poem written by Abi Townsend provides you with a detailed incident from the perspective of an Afghanistan fighter, fighter for his country. The untitled poem by George Boker evokes you to empathise with the family left behind. Being written in the 19th century, the language disconnects you directly. The poem requires you to study the language in more detail so you can create a deeper understanding and connection with the key themes of death and loyalty.

The language used throughout the poems conveys meaning. Each poetic technique is to evoke and engage you as the reader. Visual learning is the most preferred learning style. As a result, the language features typically draw on your ability to visualise what is being described. A metaphor is identified as ‘saying something is something’. It is your responsibility to identify the technique but also be able to explain the effect of the technique to you as the reader. For instance, // His aching jaws grip a hot parch'd tongue // is a metaphor from ‘The Happy Warrior’. The metaphor is being descriptive through the choice of words, such as //aching// and //hot parch’d//. The Metaphor is encouraging you to imagine the body parts of the solider taking a form of their own. By personifying the jaws to physically grip the tongue, despite the jaw not being able to do this. It creates a sense of the mouth swelling up, the persona is hanging on to his life, to breath, to live, but due to the hot and unbearable conditions this isn’t possible. This is how these poems are encouraging you to think. The language invites you to imagine, reflect and question what it would have been like to live and experience the war.

You will annotate and deconstruct EACH POEM in class. However, for you to have a deeper understanding of the poem you will need to deconstruct the poem at home FIRST in your own time. Each poem will be deconstructed 2 to 3 times, in detail. This will identify poetic techniques and as a class we will collaborate the effect these techniques have on us as the readers.

ENJOY :)