Library display

Here's a photo album of pictures of the boards displaying our Christmas Past 'Everyday Writes' project, currently in the Library, as mentioned last Friday:-

Cube outing

Tonight, the Shakespeare Society has its outing to the Classic Stage Ireland production of The Winter's Tale in the Cube (Project Arts Centre). Go to last Wednesday's post for a review, and comments/reviews from the Irish Independent, RTE, the Sunday Business Post, the Irish Times and the Sunday Times.

The Shakespeare Society always grabs a chance to see any available productions in Dublin. The next planned expedition is to the Abbey Theatre's Comedy of Errors at the start of next term, directed by Jason Byrne.

Austen, du Maurier, Rowling

Last term Transition Year pupil Sope Anthony-Ojolola received a Distinction for her Extended Essay. She writes:-

Love is the main topic for all three of the books I have chosen for this essay, and many different types are portrayed in many different ways. The books I have chosen are Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. I think that these books really taught me a lot about just how much of an impact love has made on life in general and they were all brilliant and gripping in completely different ways. The three authors all had completely different styles of writing, but they each made them work in their own specific way.

Relationships, bonds, love, and most importantly, trust, all intertwine in all three of these books in such amazing and clever ways. All these heroes and heroines show us that the world is all based around love and that even though at some point we all wish that it was a much better place, it could also be much worse.

All these different relationships have made me think about how complicated relationships between people can actually be, but they all seem to be worth it at the end of the books. I hope I’ll be able to explain to you today what all these books have shown me about life and, of course, about love.

Read Sope's full essay here.

Everybody Writes display

Last term, on Tuesday 9th December, we had our first ever Everybody Writes day, with everyone in the school (pupils and many staff) writing briefly on the subject 'Christmas Past'. We blogged some of these in the following days.

Now, for the next week or so, we are displaying those pieces on large boards all over our Library. They're striking-looking, and visitors to the Library are drawn to them. Pictured above, a Wordle of all the words in the pieces (click on it for a closer look).

The Pirate Medusa

Last term we mentioned Cliff Yates's fine book Jumpstart: poetry in the secondary school. Here's a short writing exercise by Eleanor Dolphin of II form, which was prompted by the book. This was was written in class during a ten minute 'led' writing task. The leader prompts with a 'walk through', giving pupils about two minutes to write about each observation: a room, a piece of furniture, a newspaper, the newspaper's date, a photograph, and so on. It's a simple task that allows each pupil to write with imaginative
scope minus the 'How do I start?' anxiety and can be a useful warm-up exercise for writing compositions narrated in first person.

As soon as I stepped into the room I knew things were all wrong. There was a table stuck to the ceiling. What looked like strawberry jam was spattered across the walls. Even as I spoke a knife that was previously stuck to the table sliced through the floorboards with a crashing thud, and the table followed with a little more gusto.

I circled the now divided table; it had been a popular type in the 1600s and had once been cloaked by a frilly lace table cloth. On the floor beside it lay an old, crinkly, yellow newspaper. I saw that the date was 15th December 15th 1898. On the left hand side was an intriguing photograph of an old woman climbing a tree to save her cat. Looking at the woman I would hazard a guess that she was one hundred and three years old.

Lurking in the shadows behind me I saw that an odd man was there, a sort of pirate-parrot-spider hybrid. He looked like a pirate Medusa with feathery wings. Looking at the photo in the paper again, I saw that the same man behind me had killed that woman and her cat a few days afterwards. That would mean that this man was over a hundred years old. He had been tried, and had admitted that he had killed her purposely with a steamroller because she had stolen his cat.

"I've been waiting a long time for you", he rasped. As I looked around the door was locking itself.

Equal Status

An interesting use of linguistic analysis: the boffins at GenderAnalyzer have created a site which 'uses Artificial Intelligence to determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman'. On running SCC English through it, this was the message:-

We guess http://www.sccenglish.ie is written by a woman (50%); however it's quite gender neutral.

Since this is an equal opportunities group blog, we're quite pleased with this interesting result.

We took the liberty of also checking on our Science colleagues, and this is the result from the Frog Blog :-

We think http://blog.sccscience.com/ is written by a man (61%).

Come on, boys.

The Winter's Tale

On Monday a group of senior pupils will be going to the Classic Stage Ireland production of Shakespeare's late 'romance' The Winter's Tale at the Cube in the Project Arts Centre. Mr Girdham will give a short introduction to the play in Adare on Friday evening.

This play of strange juxtapositions (captured in the double posters of Leontes and Autolycus) is not produced often, and so is well worth catching. The intensity of the opening Act (Othello re-written as Greek tragedy) comes across particularly well in the small Cube space, notably in Chris Heaney's performance as King Leontes of Sicily. Unlike Othello's, this jealousy explodes from nowhere, and is thus a different challenge for the actor, but Heaney certainly gets across his character's catastrophic disintegration. Audrey McCoy also expresses effectively his wife Hermione's bewilderment and, at the end of the play, her tender love (the famously extraordinary restoration scene is genuinely moving).

There is also a solid performance by Neil Hogan as Camillo and a strong one by Lesa Thurman as Paulina, Hermione's friend and saviour. The only real false note is Andy Blaikie's frantic and over-insistent clowning as Autolycus; less can be more in acting. Andy Hinds is the director, and a few minor glitches will no doubt be ironed out as the run progresses.

The production is reviewed in today's Irish Independent by Colin Murphy here. He concludes:-

The production is long, at three hours, and not always clear. But Hinds captures something of the ethereal strangeness in it, and that is appropriate on this winter's night.

James McMahon reviews it for RTE here, and concludes that it is :- a terrific success and, while the play has been considered one of Shakespeare's 'problem plays' (both halves seemingly at odds with each other), nothing appeared problematic in this production, with the ensemble completely at ease at all times. One could think of worse ways to wile away a winter's evening.

Added 19.01.09 -
In the Sunday Times yesterday, Declan Burke was less impressed, writing that the first three acts are well executed, Heaney's charged intensity rendering Leontes's derangement plausible. But the shift from impending tragedy to bliss in the final two acts appears to catch out the director, Andy Hinds. The choreography is crude, poor timing ruins too many comic lines, and only Lesa Thurman, as Hermione's friend and the tale's conscience, Paulina, successfully bridges the switch in tone with a compelling performance.

Added 20.01.09-
In the Sunday Business Post review, Sara Keating calls it a clear vision of this neglected drama in (an) intelligent, gripping and hugely entertaining production of the play.

Added 22.01.09-

In today's Irish Times review, Gerry Colgan writes that the fifth annual Shakespeare production by Classic Stage Ireland, directed as always by Andy Hinds, is well up to the standards the company has set for itself. It is a no-frills interpretation in which the characters are sharply etched and the verse dialogue is spoken with precision; a traditional homage to the author. The acting is controlled and persuasive, rising to scale dramatic peaks as required.

An Anglo-Saxon Riddle

The first Poem of the Week of 2009 is by far the oldest one so far. It's Kevin Crossley-Holland's translation of Riddle 23 from The Exeter Book. His version is here, and the original with a more literal translation can be read here, together with the solution.

Some screenshots of the manuscript can be seen here.

Department description

The College site, which has been completely redesigned over recent months by Adam Green of Bristlebird, now has detailed descriptions of many subject departments (all will be online before long). Visitors to SCC English will be already be familiar with our Department, but for those interested you can read an overview here.

II form reading list

The II form suggested reading list (leading on to their book report) is now on the Library computer, and can also be accessed here and under Department Documents in the sidebar. There are 31 books listed, under the categories Family, Fantasy/Adventure, Bereavement and Friendship, First Love/Growing Pains, War and Conflict, Historical Adventure, Young People's Struggles, and Animals.

Among the recommended books are Irish novels from O'Brien Press: Something Invisible, by Siobhan Parkinson, and Aubrey Flegg's The Cinnamon Tree (the O'Brien site also has a teaching guide for this). There are paragraphs on each book on the list itself.

Lost in India

A past contributor to SCC English, Old Columban Lewis Mathews, is now blogging on his experiences travelling and working on a newspaper in India. You can follow his experiences here.

TY Image Module

Today we start the second round of our modules in our Transition Year Course. There are four of these, and they give a chance for pupils to experience a topic for a week taught by a different teacher. This year, they are: Geoffrey Chaucer and the history of the English language; W.B. Yeats; a film module; and a new module taught by Ms Smith on 'Poetry and the Image', which she describes in this post:-

This Transition Year module aims to explore the link between poetry and painting. Since as far back as we can trace there has been a lively dialogue between the two art forms. Anyone who has read poetry will know that the creation of vivid images in the mind’s eye is one of the wonderful effects of this activity. Many famous painters have gone one step further and realised their interpretation of a poem on canvas. As well as going from word to image we look at the reverse. When one looks at a painting (a somewhat restricted, framed world) most are compelled to flesh out the story; what could be going on here? Who is this dark figure on the left? Why do these bright yellow sunflowers seem sinister? Writers are often drawn to translate the image back into words in their purest form; poetry.

At the end of the module students compose a poem of their own inspired by an image that fascinates them. Some forms of poetry suit particular images very well, capturing the essence of the painting. For instance, Igor Verkhovskiy has written a villanelle, an almost cyclical form of poetry based on rhyme and repetition. He was inspired by Pieter Bruegel’s 1563 painting of the spiralling tower of Babel.

(This poem can be read in today's other post here).

The images used in the course can be accessed by clicking on the links in the following list, followed by the relevant poems:-

• Paolo Uccello 'St George and the Dragon' (c. 1456) with poem by U. A. Fanthorpe 'Not My Best Side'.
  
• Pieter Brueghel (with ‘h’ until 1559) Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1558) with poem by William Carlos Williams of the same title (also a look at Ovid’s 'The Flight', translated by Richard Brett).
• Pieter de Hooch 'Courtyards in Delft' (1659) with poem of the same title by Derek Mahon (the second link has both).
  
• John William Waterhouse 'La Belle Dame sans Merci' (1893, above) with ballad by John Keats of the same title.
• Edward Hopper 'Early Sunday Morning' (1930) with poem by John Stone of the same title.

Villanelle : The Tower of Babel

This villanelle was written by TY pupil Igor Verkhovskiy, inspired by Pieter Bruegel’s 1563 painting of the spiralling tower of Babel (left), as a result of the first module in our TY rota, which is explained by teacher Ms Smith in today's other post here. (Currently there is a fine exhibition at the British Museum called 'Babylon', previously at the Pergamon in Berlin, which examines the many uses of the Babylon story in Western art over the centuries - see the Guardian clip at the bottom of this page).


'The Tower of Babel', by Igor Verkhovskiy

How much pain did the tower take?
Was it a prison that gave them the taste?
And how many lives did that fire bake?

This Giant tower, the ruler’s make,
Walls swallow blood like a blunt paste,
How much pain did the tower take?

The gods send an omen, for people’s sake,
But no tools were dropped, it all went to waste.
How many lives did that fire bake?

Warships and armies come to the lake,
Is it war, or is that not the case?
How much pain did the tower take?

Corpses and souls the tower will take,
And out of the tower people are chased.
How many lives will that tower take?

Emotions in this hell are never fake,
Where souls and bodies burn with haste.
How much pain did the tower take?
And how many lives did that fire bake?

Forster, Hosseini, Shaffer

At the end of last term, Miriam Poulton was awarded a Commendation for her fine Extended Essay on the theme of location/setting in three different novels - A Room with a View by E.M. Forster, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows.

Miriam writes : -

One of the things all novels have in common is that they all have a setting, they all take place somewhere and sometime. In some books the setting is rich in detail and beautiful, in others it is simply the backdrop for the story. However, it is not the setting that I plan on looking at. Instead, I want to investigate something that can affect real life as well as that of characters in novels. Location can affect people’s moods and actions often to a very great extent and I thought it would be interesting to see how this happens in novels as well.

I have studied the theme of location in three very different novels. One takes place for the first half around the Italian city of Florence and for the second part a sleepy English village. My next book takes place just after the Second World War, in a London that is slowly rebuilding itself and a Guernsey that is recovering from occupation by the Germans. My third book takes place in war-torn Kabul, a city in Afghanistan. In each of these, the setting plays a large part in the story, it is affected by events and has an impact on characters. Often, a character’s home has the most profound effect on them, whether their home is where they have lived their whole life or a place they are only just discovering.

Read Miriam's full essay on these three novels here.

Start of Term

The Hilary Term starts today, ending on Friday 27th March. Ahead of us on the English front are: the Junior Play, Romeo and Juliet; the Senior and Junior English Prizes; the Peter Dix Memorial and Junior Poetry Prizes; World Book Day; TY Work Portfolio pieces; the Mock Leaving and Junior Certificate exams; and plenty more. Starting tomorrow, we'll also be catching up with the considerable amount of excellent essay work done near the end of last term.

Terry Dolan

Our friend Professor Terry Dolan returned to the Meaning of Words slot on Sean Moncrieff's afternoon Newstalk Radio show today, to a warm public welcome. Terry suffered a stroke in February 2008, and has been recuperating since. He talked to Sean Moncrieff about this experience, and also about the origins of medical words.

We're looking forward to welcoming Terry back to St Columba's sometime this term; he's been visiting the College and talking to pupils about such topics as Geoffrey Chaucer, Hiberno-English and 'bad' language for 35 years - see previous reports on his visits in 2007 and 2006.

Banished Words

Each year Lake Superior State University publishes its "List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness". This year, 'green', 'carbon footprint', and 'maverick' feature, as well as 'iconic'. There's also the phrase 'desperate search' for something that can't be found, as opposed to, simply, 'search'. You can express your own linguistic irritations by adding your own words or phrase here.

American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld

For a non-bookish Presidency (this is about to change), George W. Bush's administration has generated an enormous amount of literature, much of it of course political (such as Bob Woodward's war analyses), some of it more personal (such as Jacob Weisberg's The Bush Tragedy). One of the most oblique ways into the White House, however, is Curtis Sittenfeld's recent American Wife, a fictionalisation of the life of Laura Bush through the figure of Alice Blackwell.

This is another novel which has a scope and ambition which seem distinctively American. It's a tremendously readable 550 pages, with only a few longueurs. A lot of discussion of the novel has focussed, inevitably but reductively, on the connections with Laura Bush, but there are so many varied pleasures in its sweep that this may be an unsatisfactory and distracting way to approach it.

Sittenfeld's website is here, with plenty of links to interviews and reviews.

JMG