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WRITE A POEM COMPETITION WINNERS
Senior 1st Prize
TOMATOES
I feel sad when the sun shines here,
Its familiar light revealing
Unfamiliar absences.
Another year separates us –
It was all ours:
The forest, the fields, the streams …
We went barefoot, explored and built dams.
Tomatoes ripened
In the exotic heat from the Tunnel.
1st Prize Junior
WHAT ARE THE STARS?
I loved our little house
Where my mother,
On hands and knees,
Carefully clipped the edges of our
Five little lawns.
The stars are flicks of yellow paint,
Against a black canvas.
There’s nothing left now.
Just my family:
Five of us –
In a square, grey house.
They are shiny gold coins,
Falling from God’s pocket.
They are night lamps turned on,
In the houses of heaven.
They are millions of lighthouses,
On a dark sea at night.
My childhood friends have moved away.
Brambles grow though the roses
And the gaping Tunnel shields only
Brittle stalks of long-dead tomatoes.
They are bright candles held by spirits,
Trying to find their way to heaven.
Aisling Murray
Royal & Prior, Raphoe,
Co. Donegal
Modelled on ‘What is the Sun?’ by Wes Magee
The forests were felled.
We stay inside with the curtains drawn,
Watching TV. No-one notices.
Grass is beginning to creep
Over the unused piles of bricks.
Something has died …
This place is a warped echo of the past.
We expect nothing from each other.
My life here is already a pleasant
Memory. I’m waiting –
Waiting to begin my life.
Waiting to leave.
Vraja Lila Blake
Scoil Chonglais, Baltinglass, Wicklow
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Joint 3rd Junior
EVERYTHING CHANGES
Go, Eveline, go!
What’s here for you?
A family who cares?
A father who loves?
No, Eveline, no.
2nd Prize Junior
BLUE CIRCUS
Her body is elegantly
Painted
Red with flower patterns,
A pair of blue shorts,
Elaborately embroidered.
Everything changes.
Its a long time ago
Since you and your friends
Used to play in the snow,
Just go, Eveline, go!
Her long black hair
Swings over her
Flawless face.
She holds a fan.
She is the trapeze artist.
So tired, young Eveline.
What’s here for you?
A drunken old father
What did he ever do?
Go, Eveline, go!
A beam of light
Falls on her,
Cutting a way
Through the deep blue
Of the circus tent.
Selena Campbell
Inspired by the short story, ‘Eveline’, by James Joyce
Circus folk play music.
On a tambourine,
An accordion,
A cello,
And an oboe.
Joint 3rd Junior
DIAMOND
Mounted in a jeweller’s window
You seduced my helpless eye,
Capturing my gaze with your clean-cut smile,
Your twinkling wink, dazzling me with your fire,
Your internal inferno.
Paralysed by your beauty,
Wildly entranced by your figure,
I gazed upon your finely cut body
As it blasted out an array of rainbows
Onto the glass separating you and I.
How I would love to hold you as my own.
To me, precious Diamond,
You are much more than just sparkle and stone.
The moon has grown
A hand
To play the violin.
The cockerel beats
A tiny drum.
A green show horse
Looks on admiring
The trapeze artist,
While flying fish throw
Flowers to her.
Yet outside
The beam of light,
Dark blue shadows loom.
Silhouettes of people
Dance in the dark.
Ahmad Asad
High in the air
The trapeze artist looks on,
Her cheeks rouge.
She gazes into the shadows,
Conscious of the fall.
Through there are disasters in the world
There is also happiness
Though at this second people are dying
There is a child playing with its dog
And a happy family sitting down to dinner
Claire Mc Sweeney
Though there are people burying their dead
A baby has been born into the world
And a man is listening to the radio smiling
Highly Commended Junior
THOUGH THERE ARE DISASTERS
Mary Ellen Ryan
Modelled on ‘Though there are torturers’
by Michael Coady
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Highly Commended Junior
Commended Junior
WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
THE FARMERS
People hurry around,
Like something is lost,
Running and walking,
Jogging and sprinting,
Pushing and shoving,
Making a path,
Leaving no stone unturned,
Looking for something.
What do the farmers have for breakfast?
I think they have hard boiled eggs
Laid by their chickens, hard boiled and scrambled
And served by the wife.
Then I think they have a cold shower, the farmers,
In tubs with lots of cracks,
They soak in T.K. lemonade
Then their scruffy dogs scrub their backs.
What are we looking for
If there is nothing to see?
Then what? The farmers get dressed of course,
In torn and dirty clothes
And go out for the day, they drive around in the
fields,
On their 1940 Majors,
People hurry around,
Like something is lost,
Moving so fast,
At an unstoppable pace,
Everyone running,
To get to a place,
Leaving no stone unturned
Looking for something.
Waving at children on fences,
While peasants dig for a carrot with crunch,
And scoop out the weeds with rusted forks,
To feed a family for lunch.
What are we looking for
If there is nothing to be found?
At bedtime the farmers have myths,
Written specially by people with nits,
Then they sleep and dream of being famous,
In their ragged pyjamas and sweaty nighties.
People hurry around,
Like something is lost,
Power walking,
Racing fast,
Making dust clouds rise,
On an undiscovered path,
Leaving no stone unturned,
Looking for something.
Eric Calnan
Modelled on ‘The Famous’ by Carol Ann Duffy
Commended Junior
GRAVE DIGGER
Denise Mc Carthy
Heaving the spade
With an entrancing rhythm,
Through the dead it rasps,
And they awaken.
Commended Junior
With its sharp edge,
It slices sound.
What are we looking for
When the jewel is already inside?
I STAYED BACK
Aoife Kenny
Inspired by Seamus Heaney’s ‘Digging’
I stayed back when everyone had left,
Except the two men.
In a rhythm they tossed the dirt down the dark hole.
I watched and waited until the dirt rose.
I miss him as he is laid to rest.
Paul Lynch
Inspired by some words
from Seamus Heaney’s ‘Digging’
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Joint 2nd Prize Senior
3rd Prize Senior
LOST
ALONE
I stumble blindly through the woods
Three hundred cries, three hundred more.
I am lost, far from friend or foe.
Despair grips me, and desperately hopeful
That it might bring help, I resort
To a silent, primal scream of the soul
Deeper and more urgent than prayer.
I travel alone.
Along the endless rows of houses,
Each merging into one another,
No distinction.
The darkness blankets all,
The void filled with emptiness.
The wind howls and bites,
Across the vast expanse.
I would bargain with the most mercenary of saviours
To be free of this lonely, confusing maze.
The amber shade of the sun through autumn leaves
A short hour ago so motherly and welcoming
Has become oppressive heavy, almost solid,
The walls of a natural prison These woods have trapped me
Without so much as shutting a door.
And there I am.
Between the two lines,
In no man’s land,
Drowning in darkness.
I sense the light.
It stabs from the edge,
It flickers, taunts,
But never quite seems to reach me.
I am at the mercy of the forest and my fear is great
That my crimes against the all-mother
Will no longer go unpunished.
Worse, I fear that retribution,
For the trespasses of my brethren,
Shall be visited upon me.
Darkness engulfs me,
Alone in the darkness.
Regret, remorse seize me
And I remember, in a light most bitter,
The ones who led me down this path,
The serpents that whispered in my ear
Mother needn’t know, mother needn’t know…
Duane Browne
Highly Commended Senior
LOVE
Harry Kelly
Modelled on ‘Donal Og’, translated by Lady Gregory
Love is wonderful,
It spreads like Cherry Blossoms,
Lighting up people’s hearts.
Joint 2nd Prize Senior
Amy Clements
TEMPERATURES
Highly Commended Senior
You are the womb
That is the spring and source of my conception
And only now,
With cola-flavoured strawberries on my neck,
Am I reborn.
The blood that flowed from my mortal wounds
Is hidden beneath a stream of watermelon sugar
And the once treacherous tidal wave of your eyes
Now mercifully envelops me
In a blanket of liquid glass, glittering
Like the iridescent burn-wings
Of morpho-butterflies.
SUN DOWN
A beach,
At sun down.
The sun is ready
To dive
In the deep sea.
But not yet.
The sky is orange,
The sea is reflecting the red sun.
A teenager leans down to kiss his girlfriend
Who went into his arm this moment.
But your mockingbird shadow haunts me
Teasing my mind promiscuously,
Like the sharp curves and tender angles
Of a rose petal sea.
And my throat,
Still filled with the sweet taste
Of a salty hibernation,
Reminds me of my loving, aqua-coloured death
And my most desired cause.
For better, for worse,
In loving life and loveless death
You are my Shiva
And I am of you.
Stars rise,
The sun disappears.
Darkness covering a brightening love.
Emmanuelle Ruelle
Inspired by ‘This Moment’ from Eavan Boland
Roe Mc Dermott
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Highly Commended Senior
Commended Senior
SANCTUARY
LIBERTY
I declare this place my sanctuary,
This is my place to be alone,
To think, to escape, to hate, to love.
And my thoughts will not leave the walls.
And suddenly,
You’re gone,
Lost in a parallel world
Of cellar doors and stairways to heaven;
Places where only dreamers dare to venture.
And then,
Breathing poems at the bus stop;
Acting out a Capra movie
To slightly alarmed onlookers
In the butcher on a Saturday morning;
Crawling inside a song.
And then,
Still awake as the sun comes up
And in the ecstasy of reverie,
Still reading the book
That just wouldn’t obey
When you asked it to stop.
And then,
Your mother,
Brandy-soaked from the shock,
Is wondering where her child has gone.
This place will be as I like it,
I think it a fresh canvas,
I will choose the colours, the shapes,
It will be in my likeness.
It will be a happy little mess,
The walls will shake with music,
Across them posters will sprawl.
Friends will love,
Enemies will fear.
This will be my sanctuary here.
Amy Martin
Commended Senior
That child could reel off lists of facts They seemed important at the time.
But that child has outgrown homework
And is a hostage of the sublime.
AN ACROSTIC POEM BY BILL DELAHOYDE
Behind prison bars
In a cold Vietnamese cell
Lonely with no-one to
Love, and no-one who cares
Desperate for an
Escape from this
Land where we are hated
And the people show no mercy
However many times we beg for
Our torture to be terminated
You have no idea of what we have to endure,
having accepted our
Draft cards, and I wonder if you
Ever think of me?
I warn you – this is no sweet tale
Of victory against adversary
As we discover this hostage
Doesn’t want to be set free.
For I am an addict
And that’s the only thing I know,
And there are no support groups
To make my affliction go.
Silly details fizzle out of view
And you are left alone with the words
And everyone thinks you’re crazy
But you’re the only one who knows
Bill Delahoyde
That life has dealt you something
To take away the pain
Of frustration and boredom –
It’s cocaine in your brain.
Emma Keavney
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List of Poetry Winners 2005
Junior
Senior
First
First
What are the Stars
Aisling Murray
Royal & Prior School, Raphoe, Donegal
Tomatoes
Vraja Lila Blake
Scoil Chonglais, Baltinglass, Wicklow
Second
Joint Second
Blue Circus
Claire Mc Sweeney
Carrigaline Community School, Cork
Lost
Harry Kelly
St. Kieran’s College, Kilkenny
Joint Third
Joint Second
Everything Changes
Selena Campbell
Tullamore College, Offaly
Temperatures
Roe Mc Dermott
Institute of Education, Dublin
Joint Third
Third
Diamond
Ahmad Asad,
St. Patrick’s College, Cavan
Alone
Duane Browne
Gormanston College, Meath
Highly Commended
Highly Commended
Though there are disasters
Mary Ellen Ryan
John the Baptist Community School
Hospital, Limerick
Love
Amy Clements
East Glendalough School, Wicklow
Highly Commended
Highly Commended
Sun Down
Emmanuelle Ruelle
Mount Temple School, Dublin
What are we looking for?
Denise Mc Carthy
Carrigaline Community School, Cork
Highly Commended
Commended
I Stayed Back
Paul Lynch
St. Aidan’s Community School, Dublin 24
Sanctuary
Amy Martin
Árd Scoil na nDéise, Dungarvan,
Waterford
Commended
Commended
The Farmers
Eric Calnan
Carrigaline Community School, Cork
An Acrostic Poem by Bill Delahoyde
Bill Delahoyde
East Glenadlough School, Wicklow
Commended
Commended
Grave Digger
Aoife Kenny
St. Aidan’s Community School, Dublin 24
Liberty
Emma Keavney
Presentation Convent, Thurles
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‘Metaphors sleep around’ (Alfred Corn)
Mary Shine Thompson writes on the legendary obstacles
between young people and poetry
What happens between the ages of seven and
seventeen that puts legendary obstacles between
young people and poetry? Some of the most
memorable moments in my teaching career have
been spent discussing verse with senior infants
(children of about six). Poems like William Carlos
Williams’ ‘Term’ and ‘Poem’ or William
Allingham’s ‘Four ducks in a pond’ have elicited
the most sensitive and exciting responses that
showed the youngsters capable of complex close
reading, of grasping large issues of life and death
and possessing a readiness to run with the
possibilities inherent in the poems.
realist narratives. However, where prose texts are
experimental or contain non-realist elements, I
notice that many students prefer to focus on the
narrative content, as if it were an entirely
transparent glass window, thereby eliding the
complexities that the play of form creates. So, for
example, Mary’s pregnancy in Juno and the
Paycock and Juno’s and her joint decision to be
two mothers to the fatherless baby can generate
much sociological discussion, as does the
historical context of the play.
But many refuse to see that the window of form
is made of stained glass, and therefore the design
and patterns of the glass can escape them. Many
resist the antirealist, music-hall thrust of Juno’s
songs and recitations; it works counter to the
empathy they have established with the ‘realistic’
characters. Some would prefer not to take
account of the contrast between O’Casey’s
linguistic pyrotechnics and the limited,
impoverished lives of the characters whose rich
hyperbole is both comic and tragic. I remind
students that Gar Private in Philadephia Here I
Come! is not a character in the conventional
sense, that is, representing a separate individual,
but rather the projection of the unvoiced, secret
core of Gar Public. By thinking only in the terms
that serve well their analysis of realist fiction – of
differentiated, complex characters – and by
refusing to see the play of form, some of the
richness and the fun is lost.
Perhaps their responses were so inspirational
because they hadn’t as yet been schooled
sufficiently in ‘appropriate’ responses: maybe it’s
that they didn’t respond to poetry primarily on a
rational plain. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for
Godot was a big success in San Quentin jail in its
early days. The inmates, many of them who were
violent criminals and to whom the theatre was an
entirely foreign concept, had less trouble with this
new play than the sophisticated critics and
middleclass audiences that had precise
expectations of an evening at the theatre. Like the
San Quentin audience, small children play with
what they know and feel, not having a standard
critical vocabulary to hand.
What are the reasons for what seems to be
diminished interest in poetry among young
adults? While young lovers may still search
frantically for verse to express their feelings,
poetry is now rarely regarded as the best words in
the best order for public utterances. This was not
always the case in Ireland. The state was after all
founded on a poets’ revolution, and its early
government representatives included a Nobel
laureate, WB Yeats. There was a time when even
its now least favoured politician, Charles Haughey,
could cite verse in the Dáil – as did many others.
However, poetry no longer provides an agreed
public idiom. And maybe we no longer recognise
poetry where we might find it, in unlikely places:
few enough are willing, like Seamus Heaney, to
credit Eminem with the status of poet.
Nonetheless, it is arguable that a focus on content
can be the basis for satisfying, if limited, readings
of stories. Not so poetry. It insists on standing up
for strangeness. Its difference is unavoidable,
even if only because it looks different from prose.
The window of poetic form and its ostensible
content blend in a kaleidoscopic, complex dance.
Allingham’s ‘little thing’ – the economic,
immediate sequence of slides that comprises ‘Four
Ducks’ – the ducks, the blue sky, the white clouds,
merge with the impact and visual strength of
haiku. And that spareness underlines all the more
the repetition of ‘to remember’. Whatever else
this poem is about, memory insists on being in the
forefront, and it’s the repetition that alerts us to
this. Shades of Wordsworth here: remember
‘Tintern Abbey’, in which the memory is a
restorative that revivifies not only the emotions
but also the senses and the ‘purer mind’?
Now that I teach undergraduate and graduate
students of English, I notice that many of them
warm immediately to fiction and drama and
respond enthusiastically to story, especially to
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Repeated words and grammatical structures, and
the rhyme that links ‘years’ and ‘tears’, intensify the
affective power of the poem. Not that poems like
this don’t work on a rational plane – clearly they do
– but rather they exploit a whole range of extrarational as well as rational devices to extend the
possible meanings. These poems work on several
planes simultaneously, revealing the state of mind of
the speaker, representing the physical and
psychological realities we know, making intertextual
links, but always in ways that are fresh and arresting.
rational discourse. It’s so central to our meaningmaking that sometimes we forget its metaphoric
nature. A ‘black hole’ is now primarily associated
with its precise scientific meaning. There’s an
example in the first line of James Joyce’s story, ‘The
Dead’: ‘Lily, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally
run off her feet.’ Lily of course, was not literally, but
metaphorically, run off her feet. The cliché has so
entered consciousness that it replaces the real. Paul
Muldoon has taken a whole litany of dead
metaphors in his poem ‘Hard drive’, and strung
them together to expose the way that calcified
language in Northern Ireland perpetuates
malignant political stalemates.
I think that it’s that complexity that is at the core of
the problem that many students encounter with
poetry. Specifically, it’s the distinctive way that
figurative language works in poetry to extend the
range of possible meanings that they find so
challenging. Along with metre, figurative language
and metaphor in particular, are the hallmarks of
poetry. The metaphor systems of poetry may be at
the root of the difficulty that poetry presents to
young adults – at the very stage when the rational
mindset takes precedence over from the playfulness
of the younger mind. The types of ambiguity that
pertain to metaphors are many more than William
Empson’s seven, and at their most complex these
indeterminacies can try patience. But metaphor is a
mode of thinking, a way of apprehending the world,
of saying what is unsayable within the confines of
In order to throw some light on the more intricate
figurative language that is integral to poetry, let us
first look at a simpler variety. One relatively
uncomplicated form of figurative language is
allegory, which invites specific readings of a text. It
could be said that allegorical readings posit an
equivalence: you can map mathematically A onto B,
Animal Farm’s systems and hierarchies onto those of
communist Russia. Philip Roth’s The Plot against
America, which is concerned with an account of a
fictional American presidency during the Second
World War, has been read as a satire on George
Bush’s term of office. Like the face that becomes a
vase in the familiar Cloze test, the allegorical
9
fictional narrative is reconfigured as a story of the
world we inhabit. A certain sleight of hand is required
of the allegorical interpreter, who may have to ignore
elements of the story that do not lend themselves to
closure. And as Luke Gibbons has pointed out, the
reader has to go outside the text itself, to the
‘historical conditions’, to find the ground of allegorical
meaning: it’s not contained in the story. Of course
allegory is not the only figurative device that is
predicated on correspondence – on ‘this’
corresponding to ‘that’. Those pungent seed-heavy
descriptions of nature’s fecundity in Thomas Hardy’s
Tess of the d’Urbervilles beg to be read as evidence of
Tess’s sexual ripeness. From a student’s point of view,
there’s a neatness and a simplicity about allegory that
makes is seem ‘easy’ to deploy.
with the issue by eliding it – by focusing on the
unifying elements of modernist poetry.
Perhaps it’s best to accept that metaphors can take
the reader in all kinds of unexpected directions,
sometimes simultaneously. Roland Barthes extols
play and playfulness in texts: and metaphor’s
disposition is as playful as the grasshopper’s, taking
pleasure from its moment, unlike the ant’s, all
virtuous linear thinking.
Derek Mahon’s mushrooms in ‘A disused shed in Co.
Wexford’ ‘stand for’, to use Leavis’s term, all who live
unfulfilled lives in forgotten backwaters. The poem’s
dedication enables us to interpret the mushrooms as
the genteel impoverished Anglo-Irish who are
irrelevant in the new Irish state. The poem then links
them specifically to concentration camp survivors,
but they are also ‘Magi, moonmen, Powdery prisoners
of the old regime’. They are also fevered, deformed,
disabled. The central conceit, so unexpected, so
repulsive (how can humans be compared to the
tumorous growths that feed on rotting matter?),
releases spores of other metaphors. That being so, the
reader’s own inventiveness runs along the fungal
labyrinths, into crevices of its own. The poem
therefore refuses to serve any one master reading.
Not so other forms of metaphor, of which many
writers, as well as students of literature, have been
distrustful. Quintillion complained that metaphor
altered ‘proper’ meaning; Cicero resented it as an
unannounced guest. Rhetorician Thomas Wilson
deplored the way it altered a word from its ‘proper
and natural meaning to that which is not proper’.
John Eachard thought metaphor-mongers ‘indiscreet
and horrid’, and Alfred Corn has accused metaphor
of ‘sleeping around’; modernists reacted against the
apparent promiscuity of romantic metaphor. Critic
F.R. Leavis disapproved of Shelley’s ‘weak grasp of
the actual’, as evinced in the way his metaphors
generated more and other metaphors.
‘Metaphor is never innocent,’ writes Jacques Derrida,
because, he explains, ‘It orients research and fixes
results.’ To Derrida, metaphor is no loose woman,
rather an upright cartographer. Virtuous students
need only to re-orientate their understanding:
metaphor takes us where it wants to go.
These objections suggest that metaphor’s wildness, its
ability to fly the nets of reason, are what bring it under
suspicion, and I surmise that it’s this incontinence that
unsettles the conscientious student accustomed to
solving or containing problems. The New Critics dealt
Dr Mary Shine Thompson is the Coordinator of
Research and a member of the English Department
in St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra.
FOUR DUCKS ON A POND
THE TERM
THE POEM
Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years –
To remember with tears!
A rumpled sheet
of brown paper
about the length
and apparent bulk
of a man was
rolling with the
wind slowly over
and over in
the street as
a car drove down
upon it and
crushed it to
the ground. Unlike
a man it rose
again rolling
with the wind over
and over to be as
it was before.
It's all in
the sound. A song.
Seldom a song. It should
William Allingham
William Carlos Williams
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be a song—made of
particulars, wasps,
a gentian—something
immediate, open
scissors, a lady's
eyes—waking
centrifugal, centripetal.
William Carlos Williams
A Brief Guide to Texts Prescribed
for Comparative Study, for Examination in 2007
Cat’s Eye ATWOOD, Margaret
Elaine Risley, a successful painter, returns to Toronto
and finds herself overwhelmed by the past.
Memories of her childhood surface unbidden, forcing
her to confront the spectre of Cordelia, once her best
friend and tormentor. The novel flicks effectively
between past and present. The childhood scenes
capture the relationship between bully and victim;
the adult scenes reveal a woman coming to terms
with her childhood. Accessible and engrossing.
True History of the Kelly Gang
CAREY, Peter
Ned Kelly and his turbulent times
are brought to life by Carey. Told in
the first-person, Carey’s Ned Kelly
comes across as an honorable
villain, struggling against an unjust
society. The novel opens a window
on the struggle to survive faced by
those Irish who were transported to
the colony of New South Wales, in the midnineteenth century. Carey imitates Kelly’s nonstandard style, which can be daunting at first, but the
whole effect is convincing; a sense of “true history” is
created – or constructed. The vast and open territory
of New South Wales is brilliantly evoked, as well as
the grinding poverty of the settlers.
Pride and Prejudice AUSTEN, Jane
Five sisters in search of husbands; a ridiculous
mother; a long-suffering and neglectful father; the
proud Darcy; the charming Bingley; the
unscrupulous Wickham; the comical Mr Collins. In
short, Austen at her brilliant best.
Girl with a Pearl Earring
CHEVALIER, Tracy
The novel is set in Delft. Griet is a
sixteen-year-old girl who becomes a
maid in the house of the painter,
Vermeer. Calm and mature beyond
her years, Griet has a special eye for
colour and composition. Gradually
master and servant develop an
understanding. In the hostile
environment of the household they share a secret
world that is not openly acknowledged until Griet
poses for the painting ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’. Lyrical
and descriptive, Chevalier never loses sight of the
social reality of Griet’s situation and the choices she is
forced to make to support her poverty-stricken family.
Wuthering Heights BRONTE, Emily
Classic romantic novel of consuming passions, played
out against the wild Yorkshire moors. Cathy and
Heathcliff are the unhinged, tempestuous lovers, who
wreak havoc all round them. A dense overwritten,
overwrought tale of passion, jealousy and revenge. A
demanding read but who can resist its peculiar
madness: I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my
mind; not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a
pleasure to myself, but as my own being.
Henry V (Film) BRANAGH, Kenneth (Dir) 1989
The young Prince Harry has assumed the throne and
disassociates himself from his former friends. Under
promptings from the Church, he pursues a claim to
the throne of France and invades the country. In
leading his army to victory at Agincourt, Harry proves
himself, from an English perspective, as a king and a
leader of men.
NEW TEXT
Boyhood
Scenes from Provincial Life
COETZEE, J.M.
Coetzee’s brilliant recreation of his
boyhood in South Africa in the
years after the Second World War.
Written in the third-person, this
cool, clear-eyed narrative catches
the interior life of a child, with its
confusion, loneliness and secrets, in
a tone of amused compassion and
tenderness. The child’s perspective makes the casual
hatred he observes all the more startling. A
fascinating study of the mother-child relationship and
a skilful recreation of the consciousness of a young
boy striving to make sense of the world and its
segregations. Much for the young writer to learn
from and admire in this portrait of the writer as a boy.
Although Branagh has made a
historical film, it is one that seems
extraordinarily current in the light
of the invasion of Iraq and the
debate over the legitimacy of such
an act. Branagh plays the part of
the young king with intelligent
understanding,
though
the
essentially realistic style of the film
struggles to cope with the shifts in
mood and the bizarre humour
with which Shakespeare treats the denizens of the
Boar’s Head Tavern. What might work on stage does
not, arguably, work in the film. An interesting and
lively text that will engage the students and be a
source of healthy disagreement and debate.
11
A Brief Guide to Texts ...
NEW TEXT
Reading in the Dark DEANE, Seamus
Seamus Deane’s vivid evocation of the Derry of his
childhood in the 1940s and ’50s. The personal and
public are skilfully intertwined in the tragedy which
haunts his family. The young narrator learns a family
secret and in being loyal to his mother sees himself as
disloyal to his father. A story of growing up and of loss
and regret, told with humour in a style that is spare
and poetic. Each chapter stands almost as a short
story in itself. A masterpiece.
Spies FRAYN, M.
Keith, the adult narrator of Spies,
revisits the scenes of his childhood and
narrates the summer when he and his
friend Keith ‘discovered’ that Keith’s
mother was sheltering a German spy.
Their spying unearths a less glamorous
story than they imagined – an illicit
love between Keith’s mother and her
brother in-law – with painful consequences. Clever and
witty, Frayn’s Second World War novel is a cautionary
tale on the dangers of paranoia in an era of war and
national threat. A novel about the half-understood
world which children inhabit, written in a direct,
simple style.
NEW TEXT
Fasting, Feasting DESAI, Anita
Desai’s portrait of an Indian family
caught between adherence to the
old ways and the intrusion of
western ideas. Uma is the daughter
who cannot escape the family;
Aruna is the daughter who makes a
successful marriage and Arun is the
son who tries to cope with the
confusion of life in America. Told
through a series of well-drawn set pieces, Desai’s
novel is a contemporary take on the comedy of
manners, which casts a satiric eye on the
contradictions within American consumerism.
NEW TEXT
The Curious Incident of the Dog
in the Night-Time HADDON, Mark
Christopher Boone is the fifteen
year old narrator of this inventive,
comic and moving novel, which is
set in contemporary England.
Christopher is autistic and the lack
of emotional differentiation in his
account of the world makes for a
memorable story. The plot revolves
round Christopher’s investigation of the murder of his
neighbour’s dog. His investigation uncovers disturbing
facts about his family and neighbours in this utterly
original and accessible detective and coming-of-age
novel. Mark Haddon writes with great skill and
understanding and Christopher emerges from the
pages as a truly unique character, entirely believable
and completely lovable. Highly recommended.
NEW TEXT
After Easter DEVLIN, Anne
Anne Devlin’s play, set in London and
Belfast, deals with a Catholic family
coming to terms with the legacy of
the Troubles and their own family
history. The main characters are
three sisters who, in their thirties,
take stock of their lives and their
relationship to their parents and their
identity. The action revolves around Greta, the eldest
of the sisters, who has been committed to a psychiatric
hospital, following a breakdown. Through Greta,
Devlin sets up an opposition between spiritual vision
and psychological disorder in a way that is dramatically
interesting, if not completely convincing. Greta’a quest
to discover or recover her identity and to understand
her life and its apparent failures involves a return to
Belfast from England and a confrontation with her
mother, two sisters and brother.
A Room with a View (Film) IVORY, James (Dir) (1992)
The cream of British acting talent lend their
considerable charms and talents to Ivory’s enjoyable
treatment of Forster’s Italian romance. Lucy
Honeychurch’s experience of passion, while travelling
with her chaperone in Italy, is neatly counterpoised
with the singularly passionless marriage that awaits
her back in England. A gentle, and sometimes comic,
exploration of manners mores and marriage.
How Many Miles to Babylon? JOHNSTON, Jennifer
Two boys, separated by class and religion, grow up as
friends on a large country estate. Their relationship is
not approved and they are forced apart. When WW1
begins, both leave to fight. We follow their careers
separately until they meet again near the dramatic
and moving end of the novel. Brilliantly written, with
a number of superb set pieces, Johnson’s novel is a
meditation on war, loneliness and loss.
Silas Marner ELIOT, George
Eliot’s fable in which Silas’s losses are restored, sorrow
ends and love transforms all with a devastating
portrait of pre-Industrial rural society in England.
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Dubliners JOYCE, James
This is a collection of 15 stories interconnected by
symbols, moods and Dublin characters, beautifully
crafted, with sympathy and wit. It is the most
accessible of Joyce’s works and the variety of stories,
the local and historical details and the record of Dublin
life give great scope for choice and enjoyment. The
stories are autobiographical and the first three are in
Joyce’s own words, “stories of my childhood”.
This short, bleak story is told without any heroic
romanticism. This is a war characterised by
deprivation, hunger, cold and terrible confusion as
Lee moves from place to place, meeting volunteers
from all over Europe. “We were convinced that we ...
were on the right side of this struggle. We had yet to
learn that sheer idealism never stopped a tank.”
Moon Tiger LIVELY, Penelope
The historian and former war correspondent, Claudia
Hampton, is dying. As she moves in and out of
consciousness, she remembers her
life and the characters who peopled
it – her beloved brother, Gordon;
Jasper the father of her daughter,
Lisa; and Tom, the great secret love
of her life whom she met in wartime
Egypt. Complex, waspish and
uncompromising in her views,
Claudia offers a justification of the
unconventional life she has led.
Ultimately, a novel of unfulfilled love. A stylish,
thoughtful, but demanding novel.
The collection divides into stories of childhood, The
Sisters, An Encounter, Araby; young adulthood,
Eveline, After the Race, Two Gallants, The Boarding
House; mature life, A little Cloud, Counterparts, Clay,
A Painful Case; public life, Ivy Day in the Committee
room, A Mother, Grace. The final story is The Dead. A
wonderful accompaniment to studying this
collection is the John Huston filmed version of the
final story, The Dead.
Sive KEANE, John B
First produced in Listowel in 1959, the play tells the
story of Sive, a young orphan, who lives with her
grandmother, her uncle and his bitter wife, Mena.
Mena conspires with the local matchmaker to sell
Sive in marriage to Seán Dóta, a “worn, exhausted
little lorgadawn of a man”, Despite the protests of
Sive and her grandmother, the arrangement
proceeds until the evening before the wedding when
Sive takes her fate into her own hands with tragic
consequences. A strong tale of innocence, lechery
and betrayal. Contemporary young readers will
question Sive’s willingness to proceed as far as she
does with the arrangements made for her.
NEW TEXT
Twelve Angry Men (Film)
LUMET, Sydney (Dir) 1957
Twelve Angry Men focuses on the deliberations of a
jury about the guilt or otherwise of a young Latino
accused of murdering his father. What starts as an
open-and-shut case develops into an intricate and
absorbing drama as one juror holds
out for a ‘not guilty’ verdict.
During the course of the movie,
each of the 12 jurors, brilliantly
lead by Henry Fonda, has to
confront his prejudices about the
trial and about the accused. The
whole spectrum of human
emotions, from empathy to pure
bigotry, can be found in the very
claustrophobic setting, an actual
New York jury room.
The Poisonwood Bible KINGSOLVER, Barbara
It’s 1959, and it is a long, long way from Bethlehem,
Georgia, U.S.A. to the Belgian Congo as evangelical
Baptist preacher, Nathan Price, his wife and four
daughters discover in The Poisonwood Bible. The early
part of the novel relates the Prices's initial years in the
Congo – their tribulations with the weather, poisonous
snakes, dangerous animals and the native people.
Kingsolver uses the device of different voices
alternating as narrator and this helps to hold the readers
attention through this long, but rewarding, novel.
Sydney Lumet, in his directorial debut, created an
intense, riveting and quite moving film, with a
superb cast that includes Martin Balsam as foreman
of the jury, Lee J. Cobb. Jack Klugman, Ed Begley and
Henry Fonda. Running time 92 minutes.
The novel traces the family’s disintegration and
reconstruction over the course of three decades. A
heady mix of religion, politics, race, sin and
redemption, with the scope and ambition of a
nineteenth century novel.
Death and Nightingales MC CABE, Eugene
A gripping tale of love and betrayal, greed and
retribution. Death and Nightingales explores the
complex tensions between Catholics and
Protestants, Fenians and Unionists, men and
women, good and evil in the Fermanagh of 1883.
Billy Winters is a widowed Protestant farmer,
struggling with his desire for Beth, his Catholic
stepdaughter. Enter Liam Ward who promises Beth
love and escape. Intense and impassioned writing
with a devastating denouement.
A Moment of War LEE Laurie
In December 1937, young Laurie Lee crossed the
Pyrenees into Spain as a wartime volunteer from
England. He joined a civil war that was eighteen
months old and entering a bitter winter. His memoir,
published in 1991, tells a story of disillusioned
idealism, his own coming of age and a war which was
far grimmer than he had expected.
13
A Brief Guide to Texts ...
Death of a Salesman MILLER, Arthur
Miller’s award-winning play is an exploration of
failure and the emptiness of the American dream.
Willy Loman is the insecure salesman who lives a life
of self-deception and who believes that popularity is
the key to success. Faced with his own failure he
hopes that his son will prosper using his philosophy
of life. Miller’s success is to make Willy a tragic
figure and he achieves this through the stream of
consciousness technique which adds depth to Willy’s
character. As an American Everyman, Willy’s
tragedy is the tragedy of a whole society bereft of
moral or social purpose.
Juno and the Paycock O’CASEY, Sean
O’Casey’s classic, set in the Dublin tenements, in which
the dignity and heroism of women is set against the
bluster and selfishness of men. Tragedy with a comic
touch, and an exuberant sense of language.
NEW TEXT
Bel Canto PATCHETT, Ann
The story of a hostage taking in an unnamed Latin
American country. As negotiations on the rebels’
demands drag on interminably, the captors and their
international group of hostages settle into an
unlikely routine, centred on the
daily practice of an opera diva.
For some of the hostages and
their young captors, the time
spent in the besieged house is an
idyll. A story about music and
love that is brilliantly sustained to
its unexpected ending. A literary
novel with a sure sense of
plotting and suspense.
The Statement MOORE, Brian
Pierre Brossard was a Nazi collaborator during the
war. Now he is an old man who has spent most of his
life on the run, protected by friends in high places.
However, a young magistrate is on his case and the
net is tightening. Brossard is also being pursued by a
well-funded anti-Nazi group, who want to
assassinate him. Moore keeps the tension going
right to the gripping end. A useful text for
generating discussion on the nature of justice and
the necessity of forgiveness.
II Postino (Film) RADFORD, Michael (Dir) 1995
Described by one reviewer as a long poem of beauty,
romance and tragedy, Il Postino follows the story of a
shy, love-struck postman (Mario), on a remote
Mediterranean island, who strikes up an unlikely
friendship with the exiled Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda.
Under the poet’s tutelage, the postman learns to look
at life in lyrical terms and masters the art of talking to
women! Humorous, with warm characterisation and
beautiful cinematography, Il Postino is underscored
by tragedy and a sense of political reality. This film has
Italian dialogue and is subtitled.
An Area of Darkness NAIPAUL, V.S.
This is a reflective account of the author’s first trip to
India, his ancestral homeland. Naipul grew up in
Trinidad and studied in Oxford. The India which he
learned about in his childhood was, he observes, “an
area of the imagination.” Up to his first visit, he had felt
distinctive because of his nationality but, in India, he
was “one of the crowd” and he found this disconcerting.
The book is an interesting mixture of information,
description, observation, autobiography and social
commentary. Naipaul is obviously disturbed and
troubled by the squalor and poverty he finds in India
and also has difficulty in accepting his roots. It is a
very honest and direct book and, in the penultimate
chapter, he tells us that “India had not worked its
magic on me. It remained the land of my childhood,
an area of darkness.”
As You Like it SHAKESPEARE, William
Two sets of brothers at odds; banishments and
reconciliation. Young women disguised as men. Love
and misunderstanding. A corrupt court; a beautiful
forest. Sudden conversions, reconciliation and
marriages galore. Set pieces on love, aging, the
natural world and death with humorous skits and
songs. Shakespeare’s romantic comedy featuring,
among others, the lovers Rosalind and Orlando; the
philosopher Jacques and the clown Touchstone.
Shakespeare in gentle, benevolent form.
The Homesick Garden O’BRIEN, Kate Cruise
Antonia is the narrator of this novel of family
relationships and adolescent self-discovery. Through
Antonia’s eyes, we encounter a variety of interesting
and eccentric characters and the
volatile relationships between them.
As she observes her parents react to
the startling news of her beloved
aunt’s pregnancy, Antonia learns of
the frailties and foibles of the adults
in her world. A sure-footed
exploration of adolescent experience,
set in the southside of Dublin.
Macbeth SHAKESPEARE, William
Dark imagery, violence, regicide, madness, suicide,
witchcraft and despair. Shakespeare’s Macbeth moves
with an irresistible force towards its bloody climax.
Twelfth Night SHAKESPEARE, William
One of Shakespeare's most popular plays, set on the
imaginary island of Illyria. Uses the plot device of the
woman disguised as a page wooing another woman
on his/her master’s behalf. Viola and Sebastian are
the twins, separated during a shipwreck. Olivia and
Orsino are the Duke and Countess. The spirit of the
14
play is the spirit of carnival and festivity. After
misunderstanding and chaos, brother and sister are
re-united and the lovers live happily ever after. The
sub-plot, featuring Malvolio, Sir Toby and Feste, is
marked by a dark humour.
whom she hears on a local radio station. Shortly
afterwards she sees him perform live and appears at
the end of the night with his name carved across her
forehead. Her relationship with Casey forms the core
of the novel. Quirky, funny and off-beat, the novel will
appeal to many teenage readers.
My Left Foot (Film), SHERIDAN Jim (Dir)
Daniel Day-Lewis and Brenda Fricker take the lead
roles in Jim Sheridan’s film in which courage triumphs
over adversity. The film charts Christy Brown’s
emergence as a writer and artist as he overcomes
physical disability and poverty. A beautifully madefilm in which Christy’s story is told through a series of
extended flashbacks. As with O’Casey’s trilogy of
Dublin plays, there is humour and pathos and the
strength of women is powerfully conveyed.
Witness (Film) WEIR, Peter (Dir) 1985
An action movie and a love story that brings two
worlds into sharp contrast. Harrison Ford plays
Detective John Book, a hard bitten Philadelphia
policeman, investigating a brutal murder, witnessed
by a young Amish boy. Book uncovers a complex web
of corruption that implicates a number of high profile
law enforcers. Suddenly the detective’s life and those
of the Amish boy and his mother are at risk. The trio
are forced into hiding and retreat to the world of the
Pennsylvanian Amish community. Through Book's
eyes we experience the clash of cultures between the
peaceable, rural world of the Amish and the violent,
urban world of 20th century America.
The Road to Memphis TAYLOR, Mildred
This is the third of Taylor’s novels on the Logan
family, who strive to maintain their dignity and their
land in the face of racist bigotry. The Road to
Memphis is set in 1941 as Cassie, the central character,
is preparing to go to college and then to law school.
Over three turbulent days, her life is thrown into crisis
as she helps her friend to flee to Memphis, following a
fight in which he injures a white boy. Set against the
backdrop of America’s entry into the Second World
War, the novel charts Cassie’s growing pains as she
enters adulthood and seeks to join the political
movement against racism. A dramatic story written in
a simple and accessible style.
NEW TEXT
The Importance of Being Earnest WILDE, Oscar
It will be interesting to see how Wilde’s comedy of
manners will play to a contemporary
audience of young people. Will they
be amused by the wit and the
whimsy of the play? Will they find
Jack and Algy appealing? Will they
laugh at the snobbish and
insufferable Lady Bracknell? Will
they find Cecily and Gwendolen
charming? And what will they make
of the philosophy underlining the
play – that all serious things should
be treated with sincere and studied triviality and all
trivial things treated very seriously?
NEW TEXT
The Blackwater Lightship TOIBIN, Colin
Set in Wexford, in the 1990’s, Toibin’s novel explores
the tangled web of guilt, recrimination, loss and love
which binds Helen to her mother, Lily, as she struggles
to come to terms with the illness of her brother,
Declan. Written in a clear unshowy style, Toibin’s
novel portrays an Irish family struggling to face their
feelings and admit their needs, as their beloved
Declan falls victim to AIDS. A
straight-forward story written in a
simple style about characters who
are complex and relate to each
other in complicated ways. The
novel has the feel of a play, as six
characters spend a short period in
the old family home by the sea. The
crumbling house, and the disused
lighthouse are effective symbols in
a book whose ending is sufficiently
open to invite speculation on the future lives of the
characters. Character, dialogue and introspection are
the driving forces of this Booker-shortlisted novel.
Shipwrecks YOSHIMURA, Akira
Set in Medieval Japan, this short novel describes the
struggle of a remote fishing community to survive.
Told through the narration of the young boy, Isaku,
who is forced to assume adult responsibilities when
his father sells himself into indentured servitude to
save his family from starvation. The novel tells the
dark tale of the community’s destruction with superb
restraint and economy. In some ways the story is
simplicity itself. The villagers try to
lure merchant ships onto the
coastal rocks in order to loot their
cargoes. Within this story,
Yoshimura explores the way in
which communal and familial
loyalty, morality, and religion
interact. It is a coming-of-age
novel in which Isaku learns the
extremes to which his community
goes to secure its survival. And it is
a novel about retribution. Slow, deliberate and
thought-provoking Shipwrecks stays in the mind
long after you close its pages.
A Slipping-Down Life TYLER, Anne
Evie Decker is a lonely, shy, overweight teenager who
lives a quiet life with her widowed father. She has no
social life and spends her evenings listening to the
radio. This habit sets the plot in motion as she becomes
obsessed with a would-be rock star, Drumsticks Casey,
15
NOTICE BOARD
THE ARTS & SCHOOL COMMUNITIES
Towards Best Practice is an initiative that grew out of
a series of discussions and conversations held between
the Arts Council and the Department of Education and
Science. Arising from these discussions, the absence of
clear guidelines to support quality interaction between
arts and school communities was identified and
prioritized as an area of common concern that both
organizations would address collaboratively.
OSC SHAKESPEARE TOUR 2005/ 2006
From September 2005 – May 2006 the Oslo
Shakespeare Company will tour Ireland with its
productions of “The Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet”
and “The Tragedie of King Lear”. For this Tour the
OSC is available to travel to every part of the
country in order to present these plays to students.
SPECIAL SCHOOL PROGRAMMES
The OSC will be able to provide a variety of activities
and resources for students. As well as performing
both these plays at schools and theatres, the OSC
will also offer both pre- and post–performance
workshop and discussion programmes for students.
Towards Best Practice will bring together expertise
from both the formal education and arts sectors to
identify the principles and guidelines for good
practice in this field. The initiative is funded by the
Central Policy Unit, Department of Education and
Science, and the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
The OSC has also created two websites for these
productions:
www.osloshakespearecompany.com/romeoand juliet
www.osloshakespearecompany.com/kinglear
A Steering Committee, which oversees the project
until the completion of its first phase, is made up of
representatives from the Arts and Education field, the
Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the
Department of Education and Science, and has been
meeting over the past months.
CONTACT
For information on booking, contact:
William Mann
Artistic Director,
Oslo Shakespeare Company
Phone + 47 41605559,
e-mail [email protected]
or Joe Murphy Ireland Tour Booking,
St. John's Arts Centre, The Square, Listowel,
County Kerry,
068 22566
e-mail [email protected]
A core group of thirty three people, each with
expertise in arts and schools collaboration at first
and second level will meet over five Saturdays
between 9th April and 11th June 2005 at IMMA. This
group has been set the task of achieving the
following objectives:
W To arrive at a shared understanding of the
principles and guidelines that underpin good arts
and schools’ practice
W To discuss and propose formats for
documentation of these guidelines
W To devise a strategy for in depth and meaningful
dissemination of this material to the wider arts
and school sectors
An expected outcome of Towards Best Practice is the
publication of a comprehensive set of guidelines
that will enable the arts community, teachers and
schools to work more effectively together. A
strategy for dissemination proposed by the core
group will form the basis for the second phase of this
initiative which will commence in the latter part of
this year.
CONTACT
For further information on this initiative
you can contact:
Robert O’ Neill has asked the magazine to alert
teachers to the online poetry anthology,
Lorraine Comer or Audrey Keane
at the Arts Council
on 01 618 0221 and 01 618 0256.
www.heydays.ws
aimed at teachers and students in secondary schools.
16
HENRY V
Ann Ryan offers some thoughts on Kenneth Branagh’s
film of Shakespeare’s Henry V
Henry's war expedition to France is the main plot
concern, and the film raises questions about the cost
and nature of war. It explores Henry's justifications
for war and allows us to make up our own minds
about his motives. Whether we are convinced by his
stated desire to unite England and France or
whether we believe that he is using war to establish
his strength is ultimately up to us. Branagh's film
also emphasises the misery and suffering
experienced by soldiers in battle, and these scenes
are dramatic and realistic.
Made in 1989, Kenneth Branagh's film version of
Shakespeare's Henry V marked the beginning of a
series of 1990s film adaptations of Shakespeare. The
success of many of these films, including Branagh's
own versions of Much Ado About Nothing and
Hamlet, prove that such films do appeal to
contemporary audiences. Branagh explains
Shakespeare's continuing popularity thus: "We still
have family feuds, we still remain fascinated by
politics and power, we still murder and steal, and we
still go to war."
Overall, Henry V offers students a challenging,
provocative film text that is a welcome addition to
the comparative course.
Ann Ryan is an Education Officer with the Irish Film Institute
In fact, there are many rich themes to be explored in
Henry V. One is the issue of power and who has
control of it. Henry is depicted as a powerful King
but also as someone caught in the struggle between
Church and State. In the opening scenes we witness
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely
plotting to convince Henry to go to war with France
so that the Church can benefit financially.
The character of Henry is central to the play. As a
newly-crowned King Henry has to turn his back on his
youth and take responsibility as a leader. How he
changes and grows in stature is crucial to our
understanding of the play. An earlier film version of
Henry V, directed by Laurence Olivier in 1944,
presents an idealised, heroic King leading his country
to victory, but Branagh's version brings out Henry's
complex, contradictory nature. Scenes are included
that highlight his potential for brutality as well as his
sense of justice and fairness. At Harfleur, for example,
he threatens horrific reprisals against its population if
the town does not surrender but, after they yield,
Henry orders his army to be merciful to the town's
inhabitants, and executes his friend, Bardolph, when
he finds him guilty of looting a church in the town.
Film & The English Classroom
Over the last year, the Second Level Support Service
and the Irish Film Institute joined forces to offer
teachers of English an exciting course in film. In
partnership with the education centre network, it
is intended to offer this course at locations
throughout the country in the coming academic
year. Full details of all SLSS courses will be notified
to schools in September.
17
TRACY CHEVALIER
answers the questions she is most often asked by readers of Girl with a Pearl Earring
would give her father – it’s too seductive. So I
thought, ‘Who else would be close to him but not
related?’ And I thought of a servant.
How much of the story is true? Did Griet really exist?
Griet did not exist. We don’t know who the girl in
the painting is, nor any of the other models for
Vermeer’s works. So I made up that she was his
servant. But I tried to stay true to the facts that we
do know about his life. Vermeer did grow up in
Delft and lived there all his life. He was Protestant
but married a Catholic woman, Catharina Bolnes,
and probably converted. They had 11 children, and
another 4 who died in infancy. They lived with his
mother-in-law, Maria Thins, in the Catholic quarter
of town. Though the house doesn’t exist any more,
there is a list of its contents that was attached to his
will, so we know what rooms were in the house,
what furniture they had and what else they owned.
They had a servant called Tanneke. Vermeer was an
art dealer and there were paintings all over the
walls. He was in debt quite a lot. It is likely that he
painted very slowly. Antony van Leeuwenhoek,
inventor of the microscope and much interested in
lenses and other optical
devices, including the
camera obscura, was the
executor of Vermeer’s will
and very likely a friend.
What inspired you to write about the girl
in Vermeer's painting?
I have had a copy of that painting since I was 19. I
love it because it is so beautiful and mysterious. The
expression on the girl’s face is ambiguous –
sometimes she looks happy, sometimes sad,
sometimes innocent, sometimes seductive. I was
always curious about what she was thinking, and
one day I wondered what Vermeer did to her to
make her look like that. I began to understand that
the painting is more than a picture of the girl, but
also a portrait of the relationship between the
painter and the model. I thought there must be a
story behind her look, but when I found out that
we don’t know who the model for the painting was,
I realized I would have to make up the story myself.
Other than that, there is so
much we don’t know that I
had to fill in. Primarily we
don’t know what he was
like as a person. There are
no letters to or from him,
and few references to him
in writings of the time.
That is what I had to create: was he a nice man?
Was he quiet or a talker? Did he prefer to be
around men or women? Did he spend a lot of time
at home or go out drinking every night? Was he a
gossip or loyal to his friends? Which was more
important to him: family or work? All these
questions I had to answer myself.
I have always loved Vermeer's paintings. One of my
life goals has been to see all 36 of them in the flesh.
In March 2004 I finally saw the 36th—the recently
attributed Young Woman Seated at the Virginals.
There is so much mystery in each painting, in the
women he depicts, so many stories suggested but
not told. I wanted to tell one of them.
Why did you make the girl a servant?
In the end I based his character on what I saw as a
contradiction in his life: he painted such quiet, calm
paintings and yet he had 11 children! How could he
have managed that, other than to feel ruthless
about his paintings to the point of separating out his
working life from his daily life. Hence he cut off his
studio from his wife and family, and that caused the
problems I wrote about.
In the painting the girl’s clothes are very plain
compared to other women Vermeer painted, and
yet the pearl is clearly luxurious. I was fascinated by
that contrast, and it seemed clear to me that the
pearl was not hers. At the same time, I also felt she
knew Vermeer well, as her gaze is very direct and
knowing. Some historians think she was his eldest
daughter, but I don’t think that’s a look a daughter
18
How long did it take you to write it?
It took me eight months to research and write the
book. That is very quick for me, but on the day I
began research I discovered that I was pregnant,
and I decided that I must finish the book before
the baby came – I wasn’t sure if my brain would
remain the same once I had a baby!
I also wanted the book to feel as if it were written
in one sitting (so that you would want to read it
in one sitting), and in order to do that I really
needed to write the book in one chunk of time
rather than divided up pre-baby and post-baby. So
I had just eight months. It meant that I made
some practical aesthetic decisions: it would be a
short book, told from one person’s point of view,
and the structure would be linear – I didn’t have
the time to be experimental. In a way, though,
those decisions also mirrored Vermeer’s aesthetic
of simplicity and understatement, so it worked
out very well.
How did you research the book?
I began by looking at a lot of paintings – not just
Vermeer’s, but other Dutch artists’ paintings of
the time as well. There was a fashion then for
paintings of everyday life, and looking at them
built up a kind of visual reference for me. Then I
began to read – about Vermeer, about painting,
about the history of the time. It helped that there
had been a major Vermeer exhibition a few years
back and a number of books about this sort of
thing had just come out. Then of course I went to
Delft, also to Amsterdam, to see for myself.
Finally I wrote the book, going back to sources to
answer questions along the way
Do you paint?
I took a painting class while I was researching the
book. I was really terrible at it. I have never
modeled for a painting but I did talk to a friend
who is a portrait painter about the relationship
that can develop between painter and model.
How did you decide on names
for your characters?
Many of the names are of known people: Vermeer’s
wife was called Catharina, her mother was Maria
Thins, and the children’s names are all recorded, so
I didn’t have to make any of those up. As for Griet
herself, I wrote down female Dutch names I came
across as I was doing research. One day I wrote
down Griet and knew that was it: short, tidy,
definite. It’s short for Margriet, and a year after the
book was published I discovered that Margriet
means “pearl” in Dutch. Amazing, eh?
Why has the book been so successful?
I don’t know – sometimes I feel a fairy has
come along and sprinkled magic dust on the
book to make it successful.
I suppose it’s partly that the painting is
already famous – many people are intrigued
by it and want to discover the story behind it.
Also, it really helps to have a visual cue for the
book. Many people have said they bought the
book for its cover, and as they read they kept
turning to the cover and studying it more and
more carefully.
People also like to feel they’re learning
something by reading a book but not being
lectured at. You learn a lot about art by
reading the book but it’s not difficult to
process or understand. People like that about
it. I like to leave a lot of space in my books so
that the reader will fill in the gaps. That
makes people have things to say about my
books, and they can become favorites among
book groups, as this one has.
Also, it is a very quiet book, a small and simple
book. You can give it to your great-aunt or your
teenage daughter or your teacher for a gift and
it won’t offend anybody.
Why do you think there is such an interest in
Vermeer to-day?
There was first a major exhibition of
Vermeer’s work in 1995-96 (in Washington
and The Hague), the first ever, really. I think
that did a lot to introduce the idea of Vermeer
as a major artist to the world.
I think people like Vermeer because he reflects
our everyday lives, yet makes them more
beautiful and more ideal. He paints a whole
world in a little corner of a room. The paintings
are beautiful and simple and yet complicated
too, with lingering depths and understated
meanings. They are very calm paintings too,
and you’re forced to slow down when you look
at them. In this noisy, frenetic world, that
tranquillity can be quite seductive.
Tracy Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring is
one of the texts prescribed for comparative
study, for examination in 2007.
20
COMPARATIVE CHOICES FOR 2006
Teachers from Donegal, Dublin and Kilkenny discuss their choices
for the comparative study for examination in 2006
Cathy Keane, Rockford Manor School,
Blackrock, Co Dublin.
number of activities prior to the class
attending a performance. For example,
she will bring a doll’s house into the
class and explore the meaning of the
title in the light of the discussion
around the object and its place in the
world of children and adults. She is also
preparing a Prop Box for Nora and one
for Torvald. These will seek to represent
who each character is and how each
might be regarded, as well as indicating
elements of the plot. Thus, the box for
Nora will contain: macaroon sweets;
some Christmas decorations; the poem,
‘The Shadow Doll’; a porcelain doll; a
cash book with payments written up as
Cash In/Cash Out; and a photograph
(1870) of a couple on a street with ‘Italy’
written on the back. Torvald’s will
contain: a bank statement; a bowtie; a
fountain pen; a book on etiquette; and
a photo of a woman sitting in a
birdcage with the caption, ‘My Little
Skylark’ written underneath.
Rockford Manor is an all-girls school
and Cathy has chosen Henrik Ibsen’s A
Doll’s House, Peter Weir’s Witness and
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as
the comparative texts to study with
her fifth year class. The focus will be
on the role of women and men in the
world of the texts. All texts have a
strong female character (Nora, Rachel
and Elizabeth) and share a concern
with self-actualisation. In all three
texts, the women inhabit worlds
which are ordered, highly structured
and conventional and which offer
limited scope for the exercise of
personal choice.
A Doll’s House is a personal favourite
of hers. Cathy first saw the play
when she was fifteen and it made a
big impression. Previously, when she
taught A Doll’s House, the students
saw Torvald as a victim of society
and were sympathetic to him. In
contrast, the students were not
sympathetic to Nora’s drive for
freedom, as it involved leaving her
children. Cathy wonders if the play
will excite the same response with
her current students, or will they
view Torvald’s attitude to Nora in a
more critical light?
The intention is to create a sense of
expectation and speculation about the
character. After seeing the play and
reading the texts, the students will
have an opportunity to prepare their
own character boxes. To help the
students get hold of the cultural
context of the play, Cathy has
assembled a selection of Victorian
photographs, which will raise questions
on the role of men and women in the
Victorian world of the Bourgeoisie.
This is the first time Cathy has taught
W i t n e s s. She used the opening scenes
as a way of establishing a context for
the class reading of Michael Longley’s
‘An Amish Rug’. The students will
read Pride and Prejudice on their own
and then a selection of key moments
will be identified for detailed reading in class.
While this kind of work involves
planning and research for the teacher,
Cathy feels that the issues and
questions raised in this pre-reading
work will be pursued across all three
texts. In relation to the methodology for
teaching the comparative, Cathy says that the
second and third texts are always read in relation
to the first. She believes in taking the opening
scenes of all three texts and reading them in
detail in class to establish the idea of a reading
which moves across the texts.
Cathy says that a course for teachers, run by the
Education/Outreach Department of the Abbey
Theatre, influenced her approach to teaching the
comparative course. A Doll’s House will be staged
in the Abbey in spring, 2005 and Cathy plans a
21
Ursula O’Connor teaches in Mulroy College,
Milford, Co Donegal. With her fifth year class,
Ursula has chosen Eugene Mc Cabe’s Death and
Nightingales, Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront
and John B. Keane’s Sive. All three texts deal with
the issues of loyalty and betrayal and family.
On the Waterfront to be psychologically true to
life. What surprised Ursula was the enjoyment
the students found in the language and the
rhythm of Keane’s play.
The students have no problems discussing and
comparing the texts. In general, Ursula believes
that they find it easy to write about texts which
are dark and pessimistic, or “wild sad” as one
student put it. Ursula says the classes on the
comparative are really enjoyable as the students
are forthcoming with their views. What has
emerged in these student-driven classes is more
open and less received readings of the texts than
might otherwise have emerged. The students’
willingness to discuss the texts in class
has allowed her to view the texts
through their eyes.
A module on film in Transition Year really
helped the students to come to terms with On
the Waterfront. All were sympathetic to Terry
Malloy, and liked the character of the hero-inhiding or the reluctant hero who stands up for
what he believes. There was also interest in the
relationship between Terry and his brother,
Charley. There was general agreement that the
ending was something of a fudge.
The preference among the students
was for a clearer, more decisive
ending with, for example, the killing
of Johnny Friendly.
Ellen O’Reilly teaches in St Aidan’s
Community School, Tallaght. With
her fifth year students she is studying
Peter Weir’s Witness, Shakespeare’s
King Lear and Kate Cruise O’Brien’s
The Homesick Garden for the
comparative study.
Initially, the students were resistant
to Death and Nightingales. They
found the first chapter confusing and
were thrown into confusion by the
time shifts in the narration.
However, they were drawn into the
story by the strong emotions and
now really love it. As a history
teacher Ursula is interested in the
historical background of the story,
which still has resonance for her
students in Donegal. The ownership
of land, the hatred between the
characters and the twists and turns
in the plot all grip the students, as
does the relationship between Beth
and Billy Winters. There is universal
admiration for the character of Beth,
though there is more of a gender
divide in the students’ reaction to
Beth’s mother, Catherine, who
betrays Billy by marrying him when
pregnant by one of two men.
Ellen reports that the students respond
to The Homesick Garden. The Dublin
setting and the world it portrays are
familiar to them. They enjoy Kate
Cruise O’Brien’s depiction of the family
and the haphazard manner in which it
functions. The style of the novel,
written in the first person voice of its
teenage narrator, draws the reader into
the world of the text and grounds the
narrative in a reality which the students
recognise. Ellen observes that the
characterisation is excellent, especially
in the relationship between Antonia,
the narrator and her mother, Elizabeth.
In reading across the texts, the
students see similarities between
Antonia in The Homesick Garden and Samuel in
Witness. Both characters see their world thrown
into doubt and confusion and they suffer a loss of
innocence as they cope with the changes wrought
by outside forces. In Witness the loss of innocence
crystallises in the moment when Samuel tells Eli
he would “only kill a bad man.” In The Homesick
Garden, Antonia is reluctant to leave childhood.
Her attachment to her dolls and to her bicycle is
indicative of her resistance to change.
The students read The Field for the Junior
Certificate so were well disposed towards Sive.
Ursula describes the fun in the class as the
students express their incredulity at Sive’s
passivity. They cannot believe that Sive is
prepared to do what she is told and takes
nothing into her own hands, until her final
desperate remedy. The students do not
recognise the Ireland of the play. The past really
is a foreign country for them. In comparison to
Sive, the students find Death and Nightingales
more psychologically credible, while they deem
In both texts there is an Edenic place (the garden,
the farm) associated with the security of the
22
family, though the student readers view both the
Amish world and the world of The Homesick
Garden with a more critical eye than the
perspective offered in the texts. Lear’s
homelessness and suffering offer a strong contrast
to the experience of Antonia and Samuel.
attracted to the Amish lifestyle. The sense of a
hybrid culture is conveyed in all the texts in the
different language used by different sections of the
community. In Witness the contrast is between
English and German; in An Area of Darkness, there
is Hindi and Urdu; in Death and Nightingales,
there is Ulster Scots and Hiberno-English.
The students have not yet read Lear. Ellen believes
the students will be helped in reading it by setting
it in relation to Witness and The Homesick
Garden. Having encountered Samuel and Antonio,
Lear’s innocence may well appear as essentially
child-like. After all, Lear believes that everyone
loves him and he cannot see that those around
him might intend him harm.
Interestingly, songs are important in exploring
aspects of culture and identity in the texts. Percy
French’s songs illustrate the complexity and
tension in opposing views of ‘Irishness’. In An Area
of Darkness, Naipul remembers a Hindu song he
heard growing up in Trinidad, which created an
emotional bond with the country he had never
known. Larry would like the students to
explore the role of songs and music in
the texts. Do songs allow characters to
explore identities? Is the ambivalence
of the characters to their cultures
represented in the songs which appeal
to them?
This is the first time that Ellen has
taught Shakespeare as part of the
comparative study. She believes the
play will not seem so vast to the
students, when they read it with
the modes of comparison in mind,
having already read the other texts.
The students will see a production
of the play, before they read the
script in class.
There is a sense of unfinished business
in An Area of Darkness, as aspects of
both memory and culture return as
Naipul faces up to who he is. Larry
suggests that a similar sense of
irresolution or uncertainty pervades
the other two texts. For Beth for John
Book and for Naipul, the question of
home has no answer.
To help the students take hold of the
modes of comparison, the class
brainstormed on the similarities
between The Homesick Garden and
Witness. The ideas were easily grouped
into the modes of comparison and the
exercise made the tasks of comparing
and contrasting very manageable.
Another possible line of thematic
enquiry centres on the role of violence
in the texts. In Witness, Rachel stands
against violence but it may well be that
violence, as much as the protection of
the community, saves Samuel. In Death
and Nightingales, Beth is both the
intended victim of violence and the
perpetrator. In An Area of Darkness,
the intolerance and racism that Naipul
experiences occurs against the
background of the threat posed by
China against the state of India.
Larry Cotter teaches in St Kieran’s
College, Kilkenny. Comparative Choice
Eugene Mc Cabe’s Death and
Nightingales, Peter Weir’s Witness
and V. S. Naipul’s An Area of Darkness.
In all three texts the themes of loyalty
/betrayal and identity are to the fore.
The question of identity is complicated by the
ambiguities experienced by the protagonists. In
Death and Nightingales Beth’s heritage is both
Catholic and Protestant. Billy Winters is friendly
with the Catholic bishop, but he disinherits Beth
because she is a Catholic. V.S. Naipul was born in
Trinidad into an Indian family. In recounting his
visit to India, in An Area of Darkness, he is
embarrassed by the country and his reaction to it.
In Witness, Rachel and John discover aspects of
their identity that were hidden from them prior to
their meeting. She is attracted to the Sam Cooke
song and the free world it represents, while he is
In teaching the comparative, Larry says he doesn’t
like to compartmentalise the modes. He believes
that in pursuing a number of interesting questions
across the texts, all the modes will be covered.
This is his first time to teach An Area of Darkness.
The students are open to non-fiction. The book has
a number of brilliantly written set pieces. Just as
some of the best writing in Death and
Nightingales deals with the grotesque, so Naipul is
at his best in evoking the squalor of India.
23
Languages in the Post-Primary Curriculum:
Time for a New Approach? David Little
In 2003 I accepted a commission from the NCCA
to write a discussion paper on languages in the
post-primary curriculum (Little 2003). The
commission was prompted by the perceived need
to evaluate the “communicative” syllabuses that
had been in place for the past fifteen years or so,
especially in light of the mixed results reported
for “communicative” language teaching. My
paper was to be the first step in a general review
embracing Irish and foreign languages but not
English. Against this, however, there was a
general expectation that I would address the
issue of a language policy for post-primary level,
which necessarily involves English.
(among other things) to an integrated language
curriculum at post-primary level. This idea is by
no means new: it was promoted as long ago as
1987 by the Board of Studies for Languages
established by the Curriculum and Examinations
Board (the NCCA’s predecessor) to review the
role of languages at post-primary level. The
board’s report defines the curriculum category
“language” as follows:
Language is
4 the chief means by which we think –
all language activities, in whatever language,
are exercises in thinking;
4 the vehicle through which knowledge is
acquired and organized;
4 the chief means of interpersonal
communication;
4 a central factor in the growth of the
learner’s personality;
4 one of the chief means by which societies and
cultures define and organize themselves and
by which culture is transmitted within and
across societies and cultures. (CEB 1987, p.2)
Present policy is straightforward: schools are
obliged to teach Irish and English but free to
decide whether or not to offer foreign languages.
The fact that most schools teach at least French
is due partly to tradition, but partly also to the
NUI’s matriculation requirement of a schoolleaving qualification in Irish and a foreign
language. In recent years those of us involved in
foreign language teaching have begun to worry
that any relaxation of this requirement would
have a seriously negative impact. In England and
Wales the number of students taking GCSE in
foreign languages is in serious, possibly terminal
decline. There is no evidence to suggest that,
without the prop provided by NUI matriculation,
things would be any different in Ireland.
This humanistic definition provided the basis
for the report’s argument that “language”
should constitute a key curriculum area that
might be divided up in various ways, according
to the different and developing needs and
interests of students. In this way languages
would no longer have to compete with other
subjects in the curriculum, and careful planning
would ensure that the different languages were
not in competition with one another. In
keeping with the concept of an integrated
language curriculum, the report recommended
that the relation between first, second and
foreign language learning should be made
explicit not just in the curriculum but in
classroom practice. This would presumably
involve the adoption of common pedagogical
practices across the languages; it might also
require a degree of team teaching.
The possible disappearance of foreign languages
from our schools, and thus from the general stock
of knowledge and skills available to our society, is
a matter of indifference to those who believe that
“English is enough”. But of course, English is not
enough. Although its status as a global lingua
franca is undeniable, its reach is far from universal.
In any case, speakers of other languages who
use English for purposes of international
communication will continue to use their mother
tongues at home; and those mother tongues will
continue to provide the foundation for significant
political, social, economic and cultural institutions.
Any educational culture that has ceased to care
about providing access to such institutions has
become dangerously insular and complacent.
At present there are two major differences
between the post-primary curriculum for English
and the curricula for foreign languages. First, the
English curriculum emphasizes the teaching of
literature, and its perspective on language may
fairly be described as rhetorical rather than
My discussion paper argued strongly in favour of
developing a language policy that would lead
24
grammatical. By contrast, the syllabuses for
French, German, Spanish and Italian emphasize
communicative language use underpinned by an
awareness of language in which grammatical
knowledge plays a central role. Secondly,
although it is the declared purpose of the Junior
Certificate syllabus for English to develop the
student’s “personal proficiency in the arts and
skills of language”, which might be thought to
apply as much to speech as to writing, the
English exams are entirely written. In foreign
languages, on the other hand, the spoken
language is given considerable prominence,
though there is no test of speaking in the Junior
Certificate. The Irish syllabus occupies a
position somewhere between English and
foreign languages. It shares with the former a
bias towards the study of literature and an
emphasis on reading and writing skills, and with
the latter a concern to develop communicative
proficiency, including speaking, founded on
grammatical accuracy.
focuses on language that the learner either has
or could have produced herself. In this there is
no great distinction to be drawn between first,
second and foreign languages. For example, a
wealth of research evidence casts doubt on the
effectiveness of teaching grammar as a means
of improving the accuracy and quality of
mother tongue speech and writing. A report
published recently by London University’s
Institute of Education identified current
classroom practice in England as “the use of a
range of approaches to traditional grammar,
language awareness, the development and use
of meta-language to describe sentences and
sentence construction itself” (EPPI-Centre
2004, p.51). On the basis of an in-depth review
of relevant research, the report concluded that
only the last of these, sentence construction,
which includes combining simple sentences to
form more complex structures, is likely to be
effective. In other words, the only way of
learning to write is to write. That is a truly
communicative approach to the learning of
any language, first, second or foreign. It is
also an approach that should prepare the way
for all kinds of analytical activity, including
grammatical analysis.
These differences suggest just three of the
many ways in which common pedagogical
practice might be adopted to the benefit of all.
The first of them has to do with grammar. For
decades teachers of foreign languages have
deplored the fact that their students learn too
little about grammar in their English classes.
This complaint seems to reflect two beliefs.
First, if teachers of English taught their
students what a verb is, this would ease the
burden of the foreign language teacher; and
secondly, if only students knew more
grammar they would learn foreign languages
more effectively. Unfortunately neither belief
is true. My knowledge of how the verb system
works in English can tell me nothing a priori
about how the verb system works in German.
In any case, knowledge of grammar comes
after knowledge of language, not before: I can
begin to understand why a particular
grammatical error in Italian is an error only
when I have learnt enough Italian to make the
error in the first place.
The second kind of common pedagogical
practice I want to propose has to do with how
we get our students to engage with literary
and other texts. Teachers of English are used
to giving their students creative writing tasks
as a way of generating insight into the
challenges and problems of literary
composition; but I am unsure to what extent
they use literary works themselves as a basis
for the same kind of exploration. For example,
it takes a few minutes with a photocopier and
a bottle of Tippex to create four “gapped”
versions of the same poem – the versions
differing from one another in the words that
have been deleted. The challenge for students
working in groups is threefold: to find words
to fill the gaps in the version they have been
given; to weigh their solutions against the
solutions provided by other groups (who have
filled different gaps); and to consider the
original text in the light of these exercises.
When applied to texts in Irish or a foreign
language, the same activity can turn the
drudgery of cloze into a stimulating
exploration of language in action – in which
grammatical and stylistic analysis cannot help
but play a central role.
Note that this is not an argument against
grammatical analysis per se, which may indeed
help to sharpen my awareness of the
communicative possibilities and stylistic
options open to me as a native speaker of
English and a learner of German and Italian.
Rather, it is a claim that grammatical analysis
can have meaning and interest only when it
25
In keeping with its conception of “language” as
a curriculum area and its concern to do justice
to language’s communicative function, the 1987
Board of Studies for Languages report
emphasized the importance of developing
students’ listening and speaking skills in all
language subjects. In the section devoted to
English the report recommended that
“increased attention [should be given] to the
skills of listening and speaking” and that there
should be “provision within the examination
system for formal assessment of listening and
speaking” (CEB 1987, p.14). Although the
current syllabuses for English acknowledge the
importance of developing skills in oral
communication, students continue to be
assessed by written examinations only, which
leaves teachers of English with little incentive
to develop, for example, their students’ oral
presentation skills. If the emphasis that
teachers of Irish and foreign languages are
rightly obliged to place on speaking skills were
carried over into the teaching of English,
students could be given a contrastive sense of
oral expression in first, second and foreign
languages. By developing conscious control of
the resources available to them in their mother
tongue, they would more easily become aware
of the challenges they face when they attempt
more formal oral communication in Irish or a
foreign language.
In its present form it focuses on all languages
except the learner’s first language, but it would
be easy to remedy this deficiency. (For more
information on the European Language
Portfolio, go to www.coe.int/portfolio. For
evidence of the ELP’s impact on foreign
language classrooms in Ireland, go to
www.tcd.ie/clcs, select CLCS PROJECTS on the
home page menu, then select EUROPEAN
LANGUAGE PORTFOLIO.)
At the beginning of the Leaving Certificate
syllabus for English we read: “Each person lives in
the midst of language. Language is fundamental
to learning, communication, personal and
cultural identity, and relationships.” These two
sentences are themselves the beginning of an
argument for an integrated language curriculum.
Will such a curriculum ever be a reality? Given
the snail’s pace at which our educational system
responds to crisis, perhaps not. But in that case,
we face the possible loss of foreign languages,
the continuing stagnation of Irish, and the
isolation of English from what should be the
wider linguistic concerns of all educators. In such
a scenario, the language diet offered to future
generations of students will be thin gruel indeed.
Professor David Little is the Director of the
Centre for Language and Communication
Studies, Trinity College, Dublin.
It should be clear by now that my vision of an
integrated language curriculum is “soft” rather
than “hard”, a matter of developing shared
understandings and goals rather than of strict
regimentation. For one thing, the fruits of
integration must grow from the interaction of
essentially independent pedagogical activity:
teaching English will always remain a matter of
teaching English, and the same is true of Irish
and the other languages of the curriculum. Yet
those fruits will grow only where there is
explicit collaboration among language teachers,
and a readiness to exchange and experiment
with one another’s ideas and pedagogical
methods. In other contexts the Council of
Europe’s European Language Portfolio has
proved a highly effective tool for developing
whole-school approaches to language teaching.
References
CEB, 1987: Report of the Board of Studies for
Languages. Dublin: Curriculum and
Examinations Board.
EPPI-Centre, 2004: The effect of grammar
teaching (sentence combining) in English on 5
to 16 year olds’ accuracy and quality in written
composition. University of London, Institute of
Education. (Downloadable from
eppi.ioe.ac.uk/EPPIWeb/home.aspx)
Little, D., 2003: Languages in the post-primary
curriculum: a discussion paper. Dublin:
National Council for Curriculum and
Assessment. (Downloadable from
www.ncca.ie).
26
RONAN BENNETT
winner of the Hughes & Hughes / Irish Independent Irish novel of the year
for Havoc, in its Third Year, talks to Pauline Kelly for the Teaching English magazine
PK What do you enjoy
about writing? What do you
find hardest?
the dogs.” I can’t remember if
the teacher praised that piece
but I do remember she was
mightily amused (my mother
was of course mortified).
Recently, I met an English
teacher from my old grammar
school – St Mary’s Christian
Brothers in Belfast – who told
me he had asked my old
English teacher – Mr Haughey
– if I had shown promise as a
youngster. My old teacher
apparently told him that I had
been an outstanding student.
This, as my grades and term
reports sadly demonstrate, is a
little rose-tinted. I remember
him being a terrific, imaginative
and authoritative teacher,
and can still recall his
teaching of Bryon, Dylan
Thomas and Gerard Manley
Hopkins. Both he and my
history teacher at O Level,
Brother Dwyer, had a lasting impact on me.
RB I enjoy the freedom
writing – in fiction, film,
journalism – gives me to
explore and comment on the
world around me. I don’t think
of writing as separate from
the wider world and its
problems, and I don’t believe
writing to be above politics.
And I am fascinated by the
self. Before I started writing
fiction I had never been
encouraged to question who
or what I was. Most serious
writers are writing in one way
or another about themselves.
The intersection of the
personal and the political
fascinates me, and this, I
suppose, is my subject.
I find the beginning and end of a novel relatively
straightforward. At the start the writer is setting the
characters up, creating the world for the reader to
enter, laying down the narrative lines. At the end –
if all that’s gone before is working - the writer should
be simply putting the sellotape on an already well
wrapped parcel. It’s the long, long stretch of the
middle that I find hardest. Deepening the characters,
sustaining the world, extending and developing the
narrative lines. I usually lose faith in the book I’m
writing somewhere around the 100-page mark. Not
just in the characters or the narrative, but in the
premise. It can take me anything up to a couple of
years to restore that faith. This restoration will
typically entail a complete rethink of what I’m doing
and a substantial rewrite.
PK What did you like to read in your adolescent
years? Is there any book that stands out for you
from that time?
RB I was not by any means a voracious reader as
an adolescent. There were other competing
distractions – the usual adolescent ones to do with
sports, sex, and – we’re talking about the North in
the 70s - politics. In sixth and seventh years (as they
were then called) I had a General Studies teacher
whose task was to get us to try to think more
imaginatively and laterally about ourselves and the
world. He introduced me to Portrait of the Artist and
Catcher in the Rye. Both books made an impact. I
read Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Hemingway and JG
Farrell at home – my mother was a great reader.
PK Did you enjoy writing at school? Was your
writing highly regarded by your teachers?
PK Is there any particular moment in your past
that was pivotal in terms of your decision to write?
Or did you always write?
RB I did enjoy writing at school. It seemed to come
quite naturally. I never found it a struggle in the way
some of my classmates did, and I remember finding
their difficulty with language and words quite odd.
But, then, they felt exactly the same way about my
irredeemable innumeracy.
RB Writers have a weakness for set pieces, pivotal
moments, turning points. But I think there was one
with me. I never had a burning ambition to write and
while in Long Kesh I gave up reading novels – fiction
seemed an irrelevance in that stark world. After I was
released I went to university in England, to try to
establish some sort of stability in my life rather than
out of a real desire to further my education.
Praise was hard come by in the Belfast education
system of those days. I remember one composition
from primary school in which I wrote: “My mother
says I will get new shoes if my Aunt Maeve wins at
27
But soon I fell in love with my
subject (history) and decided to stay
on to do a PhD. However, by the
time I finished my PhD (on law
enforcement
in
seventeenthcentury England) I was feeling
restless, in need of a change. By then
I was 31 or 32, and the truth was I had
no idea what I wanted to do with the
rest of my life.I had already started
to write fiction – it was all very
tentative, pieces of memory, semifictionalized experiences (mostly to
do with prison and with childhood).
I had no idea where any of this was
going, and I also felt embarrassed
even to be attempting to write (who
was I to think I could write?).
PK Where do you find ideas for
novels or dramas? How do you
know when you have an idea or a
character worth working on?
RB As with influences it’s never
easy to separate out and identify
the particular sources for a piece of
work. With Havoc, in its Third Year
there were a number of things.
Early in 1997 I read an interview
with Tony Blair in the Big Issue in
which he talked about aggressive
beggars at King’s Cross in London,
and how frightening he found
them. This reminded me of the kind
of things the well-to-do in
seventeenth-century England used
to say about the poor then. It sent
me back to my history books and manuscript
sources, and the more I read the more I saw parallels
between aspects of the world today and the world
then, in particular when it came to attitudes to the
poor, to outsides, immigrants and other marginal
groups.
I liked in those days to spend
Christmas alone. On Christmas Day 1989 I got up and
said to myself: If you’re going to do this you can’t
put it off any longer, you’ve got to start writing
now. By the time I went back to work after the
holidays I must have had fifty or sixty pages written.
I finished the manuscript of my first novel in five
months (I can’t write anything like as quickly now).
I sometimes think back to that Christmas morning
and wonder what would have happened had I not
made the decision to start writing.
Then came 9/11. Here again there were – in the rise
of fundamentalisms – parallels with the Puritan era I
had studied for my PhD. Society then was gripped by
fears, it was in a kind of moral panic, and there was
an increasing tendency to authoritarian solutions.
Then I remembered an infanticide case I had found
in the archives. This coincided with the birth of my
own first child. All these elements eventually
coalesced and formed the inspiration for the book.
PK Are you influenced by other writers? Who do
you enjoy reading?
RB I’m influenced by just about every writer I’ve
read. Like most writers, I think, I read with a third eye,
an analytical eye: how has the writer introduced this
character, how has s/he made that metaphor work,
where did that phrase come from, and so on?
Subconsciously we take in a lot, perhaps more than
we care to admit, and even the things we don’t admire
can have a subtle impact on our work. Disentangling
influences is never easy.
I generally know if the “idea”, such as it is, is worth
working on if it stays lodged in my brain. If it’s still
there a year or two later it means I should be
writing it.
I enjoy Philip Roth. He is, by quite a long way,
writing better than anyone else in the English
languages, at least at the moment. His writing is, it
seems to me, fuelled primarily by anger; never has
this emotion been put to such creative use.
PK What differences do you find between writing
drama scripts for radio or television and writing
fiction?
Ronan Bennett has written three other novels,
The Second Prison, Overthrown by Strangers
and The Catastrophist as well as screenplays for
film and television.
RB Fiction is harder. Every word must be weighed
and measured. A novel is a finished object.
Screenplays are, ultimately, templates for the actors
and the director.
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THE TEACHER AS WRITER PILOT PROJECT
In autumn 2004, The Second Level Support Service,
in partnership with Poetry Ireland, and Blackrock,
Dublin West and Kildare education centres piloted
The Teacher as Writer. The course was an adaptation
of Poetry Ireland’s Writer-in-Residence scheme, with
the education centre becoming the site of residency
and local teachers, rather than students, working
with a writer over a period of a month, in four threehour sessions. The poet and broadcaster, Pat Boran,
worked with the teachers in Blackrock; the
dramatist, Mae Leonard, worked in Kildare, while
the novelist, Siobhan Parkinson, facilitated the
course in Dublin West.
During the course she really enjoyed listening to
people read their work aloud and hearing the flow
and rhythm of the language. More and more she
finds herself reading the students’ work aloud to get
a better sense of it.
Marie Pierce, Colette’s colleague in Holy Family
Community school, said the course made her think
(though not for the first time) how the
examination system forces you “to cut the bird’s
throat to find the song”. Simply concentrating on
writing, for its own sake, created a space to reflect
on the song itself. Marie was surprised by the
manner in which participating in the workshops
engaged her emotionally and imaginatively in a
way that she had forgotten writing can do. It
brought to mind the many letters she has written
over the years and the creative scope available to
her in this form of writing. On the course everyone
was invited to “Think of yourself as a writer.” This
is an encouragement she is determined to bring
into her classroom, as well as the belief that the
heart and the emotions are a writer’s best
resources. Marie believes the course will help her
teaching if only because the pleasure of writing has
come back to her.
Most graduates of English will remember their study
of English in university as an extended course in
reading literature. Writing was undertaken in the
service of interpreting texts, and the language of
writing was the language of argument – of cases
made and positions defended. Where creative
writing developed, it did so “under the surface of
reading”, as Niall Williams expressed it, in the last
issue of the magazine.
In The Teacher as Writer, the emphasis was on writing
and the creation of texts, rather than on the teaching
of writing in the classroom. The invitation to the
participants was to write for their own enjoyment.
There was an assumption that the process of thinking
about writing, from a writer’s perspective, would,
inevitably, influence how a teacher might teach
writing in the classroom, but this was a secondary
consideration and something which individuals were
free to work out in their own way.
Pacelli O’ Rourke of Tallaght Community School
found the course empowering. There was a sense of
achievement in producing work and in having that
work valued. The supportive milieu and the manner
in which the fellow participants combined critique
with kindness contributed to the success and the
sense of well-being in the workshops.
The course proved to be hugely successful. Three of
the participants share their thoughts with The
Teaching English magazine.
Pacelli found it challenging to be required to write
for each session and he enjoyed the surprise element
in the writing tasks, the constraint or consideration
which drew out one’s creativity. At the same time he
found that there was no sense of trying to hem
anyone in, or force people write in a particular way,
or of insisting on one way of doing things, “Siobhan
(Parkinson) spoke of ‘ways of getting started’.”
Pacelli appreciated the language of possibility in
which everything was couched. Until participating
in the workshop, he never really saw himself as a
writer or of having the potential to write. However,
in the workshop everyone was a writer.
Colette Phillips of Holy Family Community School,
Rathcoole, said the course re-ignited her love for
English and reminded her of her youthful dreams of
becoming a writer. Initially she was nervous of writing
something that was not school-based. However, once
she started she found herself looking forward to
undertaking the writing task set for the following
week. Over the summer she is planning to write a few
pieces, something that she hasn’t done in years.
In reading the work of her students Colette often
wondered if she still had the ability to write, as she
once had. It was rewarding to have the question
answered in a positive way. The course hasn’t
changed the way she teaches writing, but it has
given her a renewed appreciation of the effort
required to produce a piece of work and present it in
public. The kind, critical words used in the workshop
were an encouragement to continue writing. She
hopes her feedback to students has the same effect.
Future Plans
The Second Level Support Service and Poetry Ireland
hope to work with the education centre network in
offering the course in six locations around the
country, in the coming academic year. Details of
courses and venues will be posted to schools in
September. The Second Level Support Service wish
to thank the writers and the teachers who
participated in the pilot project.
29
THE PAGE AND THE STAGE:
THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD
Produced by The Abbey Theatre Outreach/Education Department
enough gems here to start a hundred,
animated classroom discussions.
It is quite clear that there is a need for a censor
at the Abbey Theatre…
In a good play every speech should be as fully
flavoured as a nut or apple, and such
speeches cannot be written by anyone who
works among people who have shut their lips
on poetry.
A strong protest must, however, be entered
against this unmitigated protracted libel upon
Irish peasant men and, worse still, upon Irish
peasant girlhood.
“The play’s the thing.” The Abbey theatre is
not just a theatre, it is one of the most
important cultural institutions in the state.
From its early days it has contributed to the
debate on national identity and the manner in
which we, as a nation, represent ourselves. In
this regard, Synge’s Playboy of the Western
World is the defining play for the Abbey. To
mark the 2004 production, during the
centenary celebration of the founding of the
theatre, the Outreach/Education department
have produced a book and DVD which explore
the history of the play and its place in the
tradition of the theatre, as well as
documenting the process of putting together
the 2004 production.
[The Play] is no more a caricature of the
people of Ireland than Macbeth is a caricature
of the people of Scotland…
The publication is worth having for the
photographs alone – evocative images of
Synge and Molly Allgood; Synges’s own
photographs, including some of the Aran
islands, and Tom Lawlor’s images of the 2004
production. There are also reproductions of
Synge’s letters and notebooks as well as design
and costume sketches.
The book is divided into two sections. In the
first section the emphasis is on Synge and the
place of the play in Irish theatre. The selection
of quotations from Synge’s letters and
writings; the stories and anecdotes drawn
from an array of sources; the extracts from
newspapers and journals at the time of the
Playboy riots; and the views of scholars and
playwrights create a vivid, entertaining
picture of the man and the work. There are
30
The second section of the book charts the
collaborative process by which a text becomes a
play. There are the thoughts of the director on
the transformation at the heart of the play; the
view of the designer, sketches from the
costume designer, insights from the actors, a
section on objects and props as well as an
interview with the movement director.
The DVD allows much of the material in the
book to be conveyed to a group within a class
period.
The Page and the Stage: The Playboy of the
Western World is the kind of lovingly-produced
and researched publication that makes you
want to throw up your pensionable job and join
the theatre. Every school should have a copy. It
costs about £25 and full details are available
from: The Abbey Theatre Outreach/Education
Department, 26 Lower Abbey Street, Dublin 2.
Tel 01-8872200
31
IFI BOOKSHOP
for all your film needs
We stock a wide range of film titles on VHS or DVD
Titles for Leaving Cert. English include:
Witness
Dances with Wolves
A Room with a View
Il Postino
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My Left Foot
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Juno and the Paycock
Other films of Interest:
Run Lola Run! Good Bye Lenin! Cinema Paradiso Être et Avoir The Merchant of Venice
and many more ...
We hold the widest range of film related books including Film Studies, national cinema,
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To order contact us on (01) 679 5727
Administration
Esther Herlihy,
The Teaching English Magazine
Navan Education Centre,
Athlumney,
Navan,
Co. Meath
046-9078382
[email protected]
This issue of the Teaching English Magazine was compiled by Pauline Kelly (087 2937293),
Kevin Mc Dermott (087 2937302) and Della Meade (087 2937311) on behalf of the Second
Level Support Service. Design by Artmark. Printed by Staybro Printing Ltd.
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