Class+activities

=Class 1=

Activities:
1. Read through the analysis of the 2009 exam that Sonya very thoughtfully provided (under the //'Discussion'// tab on the Home page - thanks Sonya!). Read over the exam and her essays. Make a comment on what impressed you, and if you agreed with her comments. What are the strengths of her essays? 2. Using the //'Discussion'// tab above, post a response to my starter on 'Blackberry Picking'. Feel free to comment on classmates' discussion. (Be civil and honest!)

Class 2 Activity: Read the Billy Collins article. Read 'The Tollund Man'. Give a 'reading' or discussion of what you see as the 'generated subject' of the poem. Bear in mind the links Heaney is making between the pagan sacrifice and burial, and the Northern Ireland he lives in as he writes.

Class Three Choose one of the Simon Armitage poems. Begin by briefly stating what you think the tiggering and generated subjects are. Then comment, in more detail, on his use of line breaks - identify different kinds of breaks and analyse the effect of using them. What do you think the poet intended? Are the line breaks effective? Why?

Class Four Choose one of the Louise Gluck poems and comment on its images. Consider: What technique is used? Which example are you discussing? And, most importantly, what effect is achieved by the use of THIS image in THIS way? (Consider the effect in terms of the themes or tone of the poem). Also, think about the cumulative effect of the images. Are there image strands or motifs? How do they accumulate meaning?

Term Two 1. who was T.S. Eliot? What interesting things can you find out about his life? What opinions did he hold about poetry? In particular, what did he think about the relationship between previous poems/poets and current writing? (You could start in the 'Literary Criticism' section of his wikipedia entry).

2. Read 'The Hollow Men' and the essay I gave you about it. You are aiming to understand as much as you can... to form an opinion about what it is about. (Remember to check out the discussion board as well.)

3. Choose one of the New Zealand works from the readings. Post a reading of the story/poem placing the story in the context of the writer's time, place, gender, ethnicity, belief system, culture, etc. Approach the text in the same way we did in class: what comments can you make about the ideology of the text? What do you think the text tells us about the context in which it was written? It would be just great if you could comment on the readings other people do, as well. Good Luck!