WAR POETRY STUDY GUIDE - Romantic and Realistic Representations of War

THE POETRY OF WAR - COMPLETE UNIT

1. In Depth Power Point (one lesson)- overview of the evolution of attitudes and representations in war poetry, from the Victorian patriotic versifiers to the oppositional school of World War One, and up to the the poetry of the nuclear age and the anti-war poems of the Vietnam War era.
   Focus is on the values and assumptions of the different time periods, and how poetry reflects the time in which it is written.
   The presentation is composed of fifty slides, introducing the key poetic terms, ideological disposition of each generation, the landmark poets and their achievements, and how poets can be social legislators, not just reflecting their times but influencing them.

2. STUDENT STUDY GUIDE (completely self contained unit of work - approximately 3 weeks - 18 strongly illustrated pages of activities, with comprehension activities for each poem, exemplar essays on two of the poems, a practice essay rubric providing a paragraph by paragraph structured response, and discussion stimulus pages.

Poems covered - “The Charge of the Light Brigade” - Tennyson
“The Soldier” - Rupert Brooke
“The Rear Guard” - Siegfried Sassoon
“Dulce Et Decorum Est” / “Exposure” - Wilfred Owen
“The Grave”* - Don McLean
“And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda”* - Eric Bogle
“Men in Green” - David Campbell
“Your Attention Please” - Peter Porter
“I Feel Like I’n Fixin’ To Die Rag”* - Joe Macdonald