Happy World Poetry Day!

In honour of World Poetry Day here's my favourite poem by our greatest living Irish poet, Seamus Heaney, Postscript:

And more about the day itself:

World Poetry Day

Theatre Must be Seen on a Stage!

Studying a play without seeing it performed on a stage is like studying cookery and never touching food... or studying science and never doing an experiment...or studying music and never listening to a song.

Reading a play might give you the story but it is not giving you the experience the playwright intended and Shakespeare certainly never intended for people to just read his plays.  It's just the theory - not the practice.

To any of the Senior Cycle students studying Macbeth or Junior Cycle students studying Romeo & Juliet who have not yet brought in their money for the Cyclone Repetory Company's shows/workshops after Easter ten euro is a tiny price to pay to see scenes from your play performed on a stage. (If we brought you out to a production it would have cost circa 30 euro between ticket and bus.)

Cyclone Rep have been adapting Shakespearean plays for Second level students for years and are very skilled at combining Globe theatre acting and production styles (ie no sets, men play women etc) and discussion of important themes and issues relevant to your exams.  They're entertaining, irreverent and much more fun way to revise your play than just doing another exam question.

You do not want to miss this show!

Here's a little taste of their work:

Poetry Playtime

Finding it hard to commit those poems to memory before the state exams? It doesn't all have to be hard work... Try this online tool to help see your studied poems in a new light..

Wordle:

A very easy website to use (assuming your Java is up to date on your computer!) Just copy and paste in the text of your poem and Wordle creates a picture from the words depending on the frequency of their use in the text.  Play around with the font, colour and layout settings until you're happy with it.  Here's a quick sample done by moi in less than 3 minutes:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/6497390/Digging_by_Seamus_Heaney

The Future is Hers

Just got this email from the UN Envoy for Global Education - I know what I'll be doing at 1.30pm tomorrow to mark Internation Women's Day!

The Future is Hers

When the news came of the tragic shooting of teenage girls' education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, you spoke up for girls' rights - in protest, in support of the cause she championed, and in unity with millions of people around the globe. Tomorrow, International Women's Day, marks another moment when we come together to speak up and take action for girls and women: a reminder that, following Malala's shooting, the world will never again stand by as their rights are ignored. A reminder that the future now belongs to girls and women. UN Special Envoy Gordon Brown will be in conversation with Ziauddin Yousafzai - Malala's father - as part of the Women of the World festival at London’s Southbank Centre. Wherever you are in the world - you can tune in and watch the conversation live at 1.30pm GMT. Gordon and Ziauddin will also be taking part in a session in which Sarah Brown will be in discussion with Valerie Amos, UN under-Secretary-General, on the theme of International Activism, from 11.30am GMT. Tune in to both events here. You can also read Gordon's International Women's Day blog for The Huffington Post - The Future is Hers - here. If current trends continue, an estimated 531 million of this generation’s young girls will leave their teens without ever completing a basic school education. Show your friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter that you are one of our greatest champions of every girl's right to an education. Ask them to tune in to tomorrow's discussion and find out why 2013 is the year in which we can transform what the future holds for the millions of girls who miss out on decent schooling and learning. Click the Tweet button below to pass on the message to your followers – and please use our suggested post below for Facebook, LinkedIN and your other networks to pass on this information to your friends and followers – your voice helps ensure that the Future really is HERS.

Thank you, The Office of the UN Special Envoy for Global Education Suggested post: This International Women's Day, The Future Is Hers: Watch Gordon Brown in conversation with Malala's father, Ziauddin Yousafzai live at Southbank Centre, London, from 1.30pm GMT http://bit.ly/10bxOZG

Shakespeare and Hip Hop - United by Iambic Pentameter

Just wanted to share this great TED talk by a chap called Akala about how Shakespeare verse sits perfectly into a Hip Hop beat all thanks to our friend Iambic Pentameter....

And his impressive piece called Comedy, Tragedy, History:

Maths in the English Classroom

I loved Maths at school and but for the limited choices available in 1st Arts in NUI, Galway I would have studied it on into university.  Surely becoming an English teacher has halted my love of numbers forever?  Not so (thankfully) as English literature, especially poetry, has much to do with numbers as my students are frequently baffled to discover.


Here Prof Roger Bowley argues that poetry and numbers are more closely linked than you might think:

Poetic metre or the rhythmic structure of a line of poetry fascinates me.  Why does the number of beats in the line contribute to the humour in a limerick? Or add to the emotion in a sonnet? Why does a rhyming couplet give us a feeling of completion at the end of a soliloquy or a sonnet? How did poets find a way to put music into words on a page?

Another word for poetic metre is 'prosody' which comes from the Greek for 'a song sung to music or pronunciation of a syllable' which demonstrates the two goals of poetic metre - to echo human speech and to capture music in words. Ultimately the 'rules' are not there to constrain poets but help a poet learn mastery over words, their rhythm and their music.  If you were learning to paint or to play an instrument would you not want to learn the exercises and techniques to help you learn rather than just figuring it all out on your own? It'd take ages!

If you'd like to learn more about poetic metre there are some great books out there:

The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry

Blurb:

Stephen Fry believes that if you can speak and read English you can write poetry. But it is no fun if you don't know where to start or have been led to believe that Anything Goes.

Stephen, who has long written poems, and indeed has written long poems, for his own private pleasure, invites you to discover the incomparable delights of metre, rhyme and verse forms.

Whether you want to write a Petrarchan sonnet for your lover's birthday, an epithalamion for your sister's wedding or a villanelle excoriating the government's housing policy, The Ode Less Travelled will give you the tools and the confidence to do so.

Brimful of enjoyable exercises, witty insights and simple step-by-step advice, The Ode Less Travelled guides the reader towards mastery and confidence in the Mother of the Arts.

A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver 

Instead of a blurb I'll use this chance to reprint one of my favourite Mary Oliver Poems just because she's a fantastic poet and her brilliance at writing poetry serves to represent how wonderful her slim guide to writing poetry is also!

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes, 

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting  

over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things.

Free Acting Lesson from Rowan Atkinson

Compulsory viewing for any aspiring Shakespearean actors out there...