Breathe in: experience. Breathe out: poetry

Described contemporarily as the ‘War to end all Wars’ and ‘The Great War’, World War One was the first war of the modern era. Both the impact of mechanised weaponry and its geographic extent made it a traumatic, devastating event for millions. This trauma was reflected in the poetry of the era which began to depart from the ‘heroic’ tenor of poets such as Tennyson and Blake. Wilfred Owen is one of the most noted of the WWI poets and his work is a powerful critique of that conflict. “Anthem for a Doomed Youth” is perhaps his most famous poem and both its brevity and language make it accessible to a teenage readership. The sense of disillusionment and despair found in Owen’s poem is echoed in the tune “Buddy Can You Spare Me a Dime?” – a fitting companion work both thematically and in terms of language.

Whilst attempting to accommodate all the overall aims , the activity in this lesson places particular emphasis upon recognition of the parallels that exist between poetry and song/lyric writing. Students are asked to identify the themes and issues dealt with in Owen’s poem and then express these in a more familiar form of language. The brevity and relatively simple message of Owen’s poem make it a suitable vehicle for the “re-telling” that is the main activity in this lesson.

Resources needed: photocopies of ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “Buddy Can You Spare Me a Dime”, data projector/speaker, glossary sheets, Youtube link for Tom Waits ‘ “Buddy Can You Spare Me a Dime?”, whiteboard maker, glossary sheets (from previous lesson) ,students to have their own pens/writing materials.

Activities

Open the lesson by discussing the task set at the close of the previous lesson (investigating the First World War and defining the term “trench warfare.”

Watch/listen to “Buddy Can You Spare Me a Dime”, Hand out the song lyrics and then discuss the following with the class.

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  Question 1 – who is the subject in the song and what have his experiences been?
  
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  Question 2 - what are some of the underlying themes of the song?
  
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  Question 3- what are some of the examples of poetic language in the song? How do they add to its impact?
  
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  Question 4 – How does the musical composition/instrumentation of the song affect our perception of the lyrics?
  

Now hand out and read aloud ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth” by Wilfred Owen. Discuss the following.

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  Question 1 – what are the underlying themes of the poem? What is Owen trying to convey?
  
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  Question 2 - what is the significance of the various images that Owen uses in this poem?
  

If students have not yet completed the task in class then they will need to work together at home (or over the net) to finish their song in preparation for performance at the start of next lesson. Students will also need to prepare any musical or visual component they wish to add to their piece.

At the beginning of this lesson students will perform the task set in the previous class. Having done so we will move onto the theme of the Vietnam War and a new activity.

“I was only 19” was a highly successful Hip Hop single by Australian group ‘The Herd’ whilst Bruce Dawe’s poem “Weapon Training” is the most stylised/contemporary of the poems that the students have read to this point, and potentially the most challenging in terms of analysis. Both pieces are alike in that they are written in the form of first person dialogue and make extensive use of phonic devices such as repetition, alliteration and onomatopoeia. They are also alike in that whilst they make some use of rhyme it is less explicit that in the poems studied previously. The physicality and immediacy of this type of work is the focus for this particular lesson.