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Galina International |
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The Poetry of the Somme |
Locations Visited |
| A Rendezvous with Death - at 7.30 a.m. on the morning of 1st July, 1916, the Pals' Battalions of Kitchener's New Army rose out of their trenches into the slaughter that became the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The Somme was a watershed that changed attitudes, changed opinions, changed lives. Optimism and belief gave way to disillusion and cynicism. The poetry selected highlights this theme with a "before and after" approach to indicate the change in attitudes. |
| Newfoundland Park - preserved battlefield is the site of the ill-fated assault by the Royal Newfoundland Regiment which was virtually destroyed as it attacked the German lines at "Y" Ravine. The poetry of Sassoon, Graves, A.P.Herbert, Seeger and Sitwell is considered. |
| Thiepval Memorial to the Missing - largest Memorial of its kind; Thiepval commemorates the 74,000 men who died on the Somme and who have no known grave. Poems by Grenfell, Nicholls, Kettle, Read & Mackintosh. |
| "Mash" Valley - down this valley and assailed by guns from La Boisselle and Ovillers, the 2nd Middlesex sustained over 500 casualties as they made their way across 750 yards of No Man's Land. Poems by Plowman, Sassoon & Blunden. |
| Lochnagar Crater - 90,000 lbs of explosives created a crater 90 feet deep. From this position, the ground over which the Tyneside Irish Brigade advanced at a cost of nearly 3,000 casualties can be seen. |
| Mansel Copse - Noel Hodgson wrote his last poem near here shortly before the Devonshire Regiment suffered greatly from the fire of a German machine-gun situated in a civil cemetery on the edge of Mametz. Captain Martin, whose model of the battlefield indicated this danger, lies buried along with Hodgson in the Devonshire Cemetery. |
| The poetry of the First World War provides an ideal subject for a Combined Tour for English and History. The poetry is allied to and placed in the context of significant dates and events. The change in intent, tone, style, language and form that characterized a change in attitudes to the war is highlighted. |
| Recommended Anthologies - "Men Who March Away" edited by I. M. Parsons, "Up The Line To Death" edited by B. Gardner, "The Poems of Wilfred Owen" edited by J. Stallworthy and "The Lost Voices of World War 1" edited by T. Cross. |
A typical 2-day itinerary |
| Day 1: Pick-up from school and travel by executive coach/cross-channel ferry to hotel for evening meal. |
| Day 2: Breakfast in hotel, Poetry of the Somme tour and return to UK late afternoon. |
| Bespoke tours - if you have a specific anthology or specific poems that you would like incorporating into a tour, please ring to enable design of a poetry tour for your school. Itineraries can be tailored to your requirements. Contact us now by clicking here. |
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