English at Brockington
A Guide to Year 9
Conflict Poetry
Topic Overview
In this topic, Year 9 first research and study the First World War, in particular its conditions for the soldiers that fought in it. You will study the reasoning behind many soldiers going to war and the experiences they had once they arrived.
Then, you will begin to look into poetry of this time period or based upon it, looking into that of Wilfred Owen, famous World War One poet, who unfortunately died in the war and whose work was mostly only published after his death - meaning he unfortunately did not get to see the success of his work.
Skills
The skills learnt in this topic are that of analysing poetry. This is often very difficult to analysing writing as you instead must think about the complexities of what is written and the deeper meaning beneath the text.
You will also have to cover another skill - comparison, in particular the comparison of poetry. Here you will cover how to compare and contrast two pieces of work for common elements and truths, and differences of opinion and situation. Here it is also good to have knowledge of the historical background of the situation and the poet's part in the war. E.g. If they were not on the front lines can they really show how good or bad the situation was.
Recommended Reading
I would recommend that that you research and read into the First World War, especially the conditions in the trenches and what can also help is knowledge of the propaganda of the time.
Read as much of the poetry from these poets as you can so you can better understand their viewpoint on the war, and look into their personal history to think about whether it could affect how they thought of the war.
