What?

1
What?

• Understand the language, structure themes of
  the poem.
• Explore the historical context of the poem.
• Create a comprehensive set of revision notes on
  Mametz Wood.

2
How?

• Looking at images
• Listening to a commentary
• Carousel

3
Why?

• In preparation for GCSE English Literature Paper
  2 Poetry Across Time, May 2013.

4
The Battle of Mametz Wood
5
(No Transcript)
6
The Poet

• Owen Sheers was born in Fiji in 1974
• Brought up in Abergavenny, South Wales.
• He is an award winning novelist poet.

7
The Battle of Mametz Wood

• The scene of fierce fighting during the Battle of
  the Somme.
• One of the bloodiest battles of the First World
  War.
• Soldiers of the Welsh division were ordered to
  take Mametz Wood, the largest area of trees on
  the battlefield.
• The generals thought this would take a few hours.
  It ended up lasting five days with soldiers
  fighting face-to-face with the enemy.
• There were 4,000 casualties, with 600 dead. The
  Welsh succeeded but their bravery and sacrifice
  was never really acknowledged.

8
Listen

• Listen to this commentary by Own Sheers about his
  poem and take notes!

9
Learning Check

• Write down 3 things that you have learnt about
  Mametz Wood so far this lesson.

10
Carousel

• Move around the room taking notes on each of the
  4 key areas.
• You have no more than 5 minutes at each stop!

11
Form Structure

• Mametz Wood is written in three-line stanzas. The
  length of the lines changes. In some cases (for
  instance lines 4 and 12) the longer lines very
  clearly break up the neat form of the poem. These
  suggest the uneven ploughed field or the chits of
  bone rising out of the ground.
• The use of full-stops shows there is a clear,
  regular structure within the poem a single
  stanza is followed by a pair of stanzas, then
  another single stanza is followed by another
  pair. The final, seventh stanza acts as a
  conclusion.
• This structure reflects the changing focus of the
  poem from the land (the single stanzas one and
  four) then bones and people (the paired stanzas
  that follow).
• The final stanza then combines these three
  elements into a single image the 'unearthed'
  skulls singing in celebration.

12
Language

• The poem appears to be written in very plain,
  almost prosaic (everyday) language. There is a
  very subtle use of sound, throughout, however.
  This expresses the overall theme (the poem is a
  kind of hymn to the dead). It also builds towards
  the final image the unearthed bones appear to be
  singing.
• There is no rhyme scheme, but assonance and allite
  ration mean the stanzas are linked by sounds. The
  first stanza, for example, starts with the soft
  sound of "farmers found". We then hear the harder
  'b' of "blades" and "back" which is picked up in
  the second stanza with "blade", "blown" and "broke
  n bird's egg". The next stanza also has "breaking
  blue". Along with the chipped sound of bone in
  "chit" and "china" this form of alliteration
  perhaps echoes of the sound of gunfire and
  battlefield destruction.
• Across stanzas three and four there is the wary
  'w' sound of "white", "were","walk towards the
  wood" and a "wound working" of the stanza that
  follows it. This stanza in turn introduces
  the sibilant "stands sentinel" and "surface of
  the skin".
• Lines 14/15 uses assonance to play of the long
  'a' sound in "arm", "dance" and"macabre", a sound
  echoed in "outlasted" in stanza six which also
  has the most striking "sound effect" of the poem.
  In "socketed heads titled back" a series of sharp
  rapid sounds evoke the moment the men
  were strafed with machine-gun fire and died.
• The visual image of the soldiers' heads being
  thrown back by the impact of bullets is suddenly
  switched in the final stanza, however their
  heads are back and jaws open because they are
  singing. The sounds of the final stanza contain a
  series of clear vowel changes 'i', 'u', 'o',
  'er', and 'a'. It is as if the men were doing the
  traditional voice exercise of 'do-re-mi-fa-so-la-t
  i-do'. This stanza also contains the only clear
  rhyme in the poem "sung/tongues".

13
Imagery

• This concluding stanza also pulls together the
  disparate images of the poem the earth, the
  bones and the people those bones came from. Right
  from the start, however, Sheers mixes his imagery
  to show how there is no simple division between
  mankind on one side and 'mother nature' on the
  other.
• It is the farmers who "tended the land". It is
  the land that needs healing (an example of
  pathetic fallacy). The references to "bird's
  egg" and "nesting" are used to describe a broken
  skull (in line 6) and hidden machine guns (in
  line 9). The bones themselves are described in
  terms of "china plate" and a "mosaic" while their
  position in the ground recalls a strangely comic
  form of dance routine.

14
Themes

• Sheers reflects on how the events of that week in
  1916 have been buried and forgotten. The bits of
  bone that are turned up seem just the same as old
  bits of china curious relics of history. The
  violence of the day, the shattering of the bones
  by gunfire and mortar shell is merely "mimicked" b
  y the flint. Their skeletons even look almost
  comic.
• Sheers could have simply retold the historical
  events of the battle. By approaching the subject
  in this slightly strange way, though, Sheers
  highlights the injustice of history. The poem
  therefore is about offering some kind of justice
  or redemption for the dead and to the land that
  has held them. By being 'unearthed' the bones
  have not just literally come free of the ground,
  they have in some way become themselves again.
  They have become part of a poem that gives them a
  voice they have lacked all these years.
• In Sheers' work, the three elements have become
  reconciled the earth is free of the bones and
  the bones have become the people they once were.
  He writes it like a hymn to their memory but a
  hymn they sing themselves.

15
Essay Practise

• How does the poet write about death in Mametz
  Wood?
• Create an essay plan for the question above.