I have prepared a slide deck to help Yr 10 students who are finding approaching an unseen poem tricky. They write well, but find it hard to get a way into the poem in the first place. Two poems are …
Tag: Heaney
Storm on the Island: an introduction
A visualiser introduction to Heaney's poem. This should be used alongside this article: Storm on the Island: reflection https://www.loom.com/share/708bdf1a449c4468abd1b15fb5c19e9e Read More "Storm on the Island: an introduction"
Heaney: Blackberry Picking
This video is a short catch up session delivered for two boys in my U6th class as they prepare their NEA close analysis passage. https://videopress.com/v/9ljCu24B?preloadContent=metadata Read More "Heaney: Blackberry Picking"
Storm on the Island: reflection
I realise that in my pieces on Heaney's Death of a Naturalist, I have not written an exploration of the poem Storm on the Island. Storm On The Island We are prepared: we build our houses squat, Sink walls …
On Eco-Crit and A-Level texts 1. Initial thoughts.
For some time I have taught with an Ecocritical approach without knowing it. It took a recent TEDx talk by my colleague Maria Trafford (https://youtu.be/TFfK_yas8F8 ) to make me consider it as a concrete and explicit line to be developed in …
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Heaney and the Famine: At a potato Digging and For the Commander of the Eliza
Continuing my preparation for teaching Death of a Naturalist, these two poems sit at the centre of the collection and lie at the heart of any discussion of Heritage and of the meaning of Irishness explored in the poems. We …
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Follower, Heaney: thoughts on metre and language
Follower -note the lack of an article suggesting the whole range of potential meanings and sub-meanings to the word. Heaney is writing literally of a boy who followed his father around the fields and farm in his youth and who …
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Death of a Naturalist: a study in innocence.
In Death of a Naturalist, the title poem of the collection, Heaney explores ideas which will be key to these poems – the conflict inherent between innocence and experience and the sense of terror which drives a young man towards …
Heaney: Digging and the search for ‘the good turf’.
The collection Death of a Naturalist opens with the poem Heaney called a ‘strength giver’: Digging. If Personal Helicon summarises the ideas of the collection, it is this poem which asserts Heaney’s decision to honour the authenticity and labour of …
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Churning Day: Heaney. An analysis.
Another of the poems in the collection which considers the aging process as a conflict between innocence and experience, ultimately resulting in an epiphany as the older Heaney recognises the mundanity of something hitherto regarded as bordering on the magical …
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