Poems you learned in school

Conny92

Hello there!
I am writing a paper for my Irish culture class at the University of Graz (Austria) and would be grateful for any help you could give me. My project is about the poetry taught in Irish schools.
What are some of the typical poems children have to learn at school these days?
Are they the same as the ones you had to learn at school?
Are there some poems you still know by heart?
I am really interested in finding out whether some of you know the same poems, so if a poem comes to mind that has already been mentioned, please feel free to write it again so I can get a better idea of how popular it is.
Thanks!
Cornelia

The Princess Bride

I can still remember Emily Dickinson, "Because I Could Not Stop for Death" & "I felt a funeral..." & Robert Frost "Stopping by Woods"-probably because I liked the poems.

Others I remember being on the course but I avoided learning-that was almost 3 decades ago.
Personally speaking,I hated English because I didn't see the point of poetry or prose being deconstructed and over analysed-it should be enjoyed for what it is.

My children are Leaving cert students(this year & next year)-they're studying Sylvia Plath,Derek Mahon,Elizabeth Bishop-among others.
(http://www.education.ie/en/Circulars-and-Forms/Active-Circulars/cl0001_2012.pdf..)

I see from the above that Dickinson's "....Funeral" is listed,also Kinsella's "Mirror in February".

One could argue,possibly,that it's not that the poems are so popular
that they're still being .......enjoyed -but that the entire LC programme is in dire need of an overhaul.

Best of luck with your paper.

Swiper the fox

Not sure if you're looking for primary level or secondary, for leaving cert exams nowadays the course changes every year usually with some overlap. When I did my leaving certificate there was a book called Soundings which had all the leaving cert poetry, different poets were selected for each exam year but the Irish poets(Yeats, Kavanagh, Kinsella, Austin Clarke, am I forgetting someone) were on every year. Poems which seem to have slipped into the public consciousness from this era would be No second Troy, September 1913(Yeats), The Planters daughter(Clarke), Stony grey Soil, Inniskeen road(Kavanagh).

If this thread comes to life I think the poem that would be mentioned over and over again would be Mid Term Break by Seamus Heaney, we learned it in 4th or 5th class(10 or 11 years old) but I'd imagine almost every school child in the country will have come across it and been touched by it(it is very memorable) at some stage.
This could be an interesting thread, good luck with your assignment.

chasmcb

"Soundings", edited by Augustine Martin was the staple poetry anthology on the leaving cert curriculum for some thirty years, up to 2000. I remember memorising chunks of 'J Alfred Prufrock', 'Fern Hill', 'The Lost Heifer', 'Ode to a Nightingale', 'Sailing to Byzantium' and others. Halcyon days! There is a boards thread about the book here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055007063

thefasteriwalk

If you're talking about secondary, then this is the incoming set poetry for Leaving Cert English 2015-2018:

http://www.education.ie/en/Schools-Colleges/Information/Curriculum-and-Syllabus/Senior-Cycle-/Syllabuses-and-Guidelines/English-Leaving-Certificate-Poetry-Courses-for-examination-2015-2018.pdf

Conny92

I am really grateful that I got some answers - Thanks a lot!

So, everybody - no matter what level of school - has to learn poems in Irish schools?
It's different to our system in Austria. We have to learn some poems but it isn't that important for our teachers.
Do you know if there's a reason why learning poems is so important in Ireland?
Do the teachers have a special reason for demanding exactly those poems?

Swiper the fox

I thought that this thread would get more replies but I guess it's not to be. You have to bear in mind that Ireland has long been recognised(by ourselves mostly) as the land of Saints and Scholars. We have produced some brilliant poets and this is reflected in the importance of poetry in the English syllabus. Individual teachers don't usually pick the poetry to be studied, certainly not at secondary level anyway, certain poems and poets are selected usually with a strong bias towards Irish poets. In primary school we also learn a number of poems in the Irish language, primary school teachers have freedom to do whatever poetry they like as long as it's age appropriate, as I said above you should check out Seamus Heaney's Mid Term Break as that is possibly the most popular/best known poem among students who have yet to do state exams.

Conny92

Thank you very much, you helped me a lot !

thefasteriwalk

Swiper the fox wrote: »

I thought that this thread would get more replies but I guess it's not to be. You have to bear in mind that Ireland has long been recognised(by ourselves mostly) as the land of Saints and Scholars. We have produced some brilliant poets and this is reflected in the importance of poetry in the English syllabus. Individual teachers don't usually pick the poetry to be studied, certainly not at secondary level anyway, certain poems and poets are selected usually with a strong bias towards Irish poets. In primary school we also learn a number of poems in the Irish language, primary school teachers have freedom to do whatever poetry they like as long as it's age appropriate, as I said above you should check out Seamus Heaney's Mid Term Break as that is possibly the most popular/best known poem among students who have yet to do state exams.

Teachers are free to choose any poems they wish for TY and Junior Cert.

ViveLaVie

I remember that Heaney poem. I did it in fifth class I think. Very memorable. For my Leaving Certificate I studied Yeats, Kavanagh, Plath, Bishop, Donne and Eliot. I can't really remember the poetry I did for my Junior Certificate or before that, aside from 'Five Ways to Kill a Man' and Carol Ann Duffy's one about love and onions.

Poetry is compulsory to study at second level over here, no matter what school you're in or level you're at (Honours or Ordinary). For the Leaving Certificate, the Department of Education sets out the syllabus. If you google SEC Junior/Leaving Certificate syllabus you'll get sample state exam papers with poetry questions and a list of prescribed poetry for each year.

I'd second what was said earlier about us Irish emphasising poetry to pay tribute to a rich poetic heritage. Irish poets are always well-represented on the syllabus each year.

Rustic Wolfheart

I will always remember Yeats' poem "Inisfree" because of how much I had to learn it. It was on the syllabus for my Junior Cert and Leaving Cert. The ones I liked the most, however, are Evan Boland's "The Pomegranate" and "Child of our time". I hope that helps.

the only legend I have ever loved is the story of a daughter lost in hell

Mardy Bum

Back in the Playground Blues
Mid Term Break
Daffodils
The Road Not Taken
Dulce est Decorum et
The Listeners

MadamX

My favourite in secondary school was Yeats 'He Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven' http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/776/. I was so upset in later years when it became extremely popular, possible because it was used in Riverdance. I felt like shouting 'that's my favourite, it was mine before everyone else latched on to it!'. I think many people (even those so wouldn't particlarly care about poetry) will have an affinity with one particular poem because it acts as a tie to another place and time in their lives.

Your wording about learning poetry has made me curious. Yes, once upon a time, students were encouraged to learn poetry off by rote, but the emphasis has now changed. The meaning behind the words has now become more important. That meaning may be seeking the thoughts of the author but more often it is important to find ones own meaning in the words in the same way a painting will have different meanings to different people. It is the process of analysing one's own interpretation that is the learning process here.

As previously stated teachers are guided by curriculum at certain levels but within that curriculum there is still choice. Remember, most of our teachers are products of our own education system and are hence predisposed to a certain extent.

Good luck with your study; sounds interesting.

Seachmall

My favourite, and the only one I remember, is Derek Mahon's 'A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford' for the Leaving Cert.

kingcobra

I finished my Leaving Cert exam in English last week and the poets I did were Hopkins, Mahon, Plath, Shakespeare and Kinsella. Mahon and Kinsella were certainly the more popular poets for most people, Plath more so in the last couple of years over any other poet. We don't have to learn the poems straight off by heart but we need to know them fairly well with regards the techniques and common themes.

Don't forget though that we also have to do poems in Irish as well! We're are given a set list of 5 or 6 poems to study, (and some schools opt to study more poems rather than a drama or story) and we pretty much study them the same way we do in English, although for English I would know 36 poems from the 6 poets in total whereas Irish it's just the five or six poems. The popular poets from what I can gather would be Máirtín Ó Direáin and Caitlín Maude.