Journeys

Written in collaboration with Laura Sanderson.

This is a poetry anthology for schools to support the English Framework and teach literacy through poetry. It covers Key Stage 3 requirements and prepares students for the Key Stage 4 emphasis on poetry. More than an anthology, it includes background information on poets and poems, illustrations and activities. The main features of the book include:

Short poems that are widely different in form for the students to study and discuss.

Well-known and new poems showing a range of styles and genres; including -1914 and post-1914 National Curriculum set poets.

Poems written by children; thematic contrasts, showing different attitudes to diverse topics.

National Curriculum attainment is listed on a one-page chart at the front of the book.

Activities are divided by word level, sentence level and text level, with a literacy focus given for each poem and/or groups of poems and English Framework matches highlighted. The activities for each focus on a particular aspect of the poem’s theme or technique so that the students gain a clear grasp of what skill they are learning as they study each poem. Written, reading and speaking and listening activities are clearly marked. Suggestions are provided for reading poems linked by theme, author or form.

This volume covers the whole of Key Stage 3, there should be progression from one unit to the next. The book also looks forward to Key Stage 4 and prepares students for GCSE work on poetry.

Poems From This Volume

Below are three of over fifty modern and traditional poems used throughout the text in this book.

Wolfman by Wendy Bardsley from Unit 7

I heard your warped cry in the night,
Stopping my ears;
A screech of beast,
That twist of passion missed by man,
That fierce taboo you knew you must have.

You hid your curved fingernails,
Your lengthening teeth, the fur,
Growing indiscreetly
On the back of your hands.

And for a time you tried to fool your senses,
Soft skies, gentle pastoral scenes, your game,
Avoiding the glare of the seething moon.
I knew you first a legend,
Cruel with beauty, Such was your appeal.

I pace your grave-yard horror now,
Feel. your fervour in the darkening air,
Stare, and wonder where you are,
On the other side of sunlight.

Eagle by Alfred, Lord Tennyson from Unit 11

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

The Tables Turned by William Wordsworth from Unit 18

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you’ll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun, above the mountain’s head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife;
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There’s more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your Teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless –
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: –
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.