POETRY written during the carnage of the First World War has been used to encourage Oxford pupils to develop their own creative writing and language skills.
The Writer’s War Project, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, brought together pupils from Oxford Spires Academy and professors from Oxford University including academics from the faculty of Modern Languages and the university's Magdalen College.
The project was designed for students to examine how writers from the UK, France and Germany responded to the upheaval and misery of the Great War in poetry and prose.
The students were encouraged to draw comparisons between the texts in three languages which gave value to the pupils studying modern languages at a time when language study is in decline in the UK.
The pupils took part in creative workshops, wrote poetry, recorded their own 'podcast' programmes and visited archives and memorials.
Organised by the Head of Languages, Rebekah Finch, students at the Oxford Spires Academy, in Glanville Road, East Oxford, also engaged in research-led workshops with help from Prof Toby Garfitt, Prof Ritchie Robertson, and poet Andrew Wynn-Owen on literature in three languages. The students also enjoyed a creative writing workshop with Mr Wynn-Owen, where they wrote their own poems about war.
Catriona Oliphant from Chrome Radio presented a skills workshop on creating podcasts, after which each pupil made a short podcast about the project and experience, discussing what they had seen, read, thought, or written.
Catriona Seth, Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature, thought up the idea for the project and brought everyone together.
Prof Seth said: “The students thought about the presence of war and commemoration and how people make friends after the war. Some of the students come from places where war is going on, so it was important for them to think about that.”
She continued: “I think it was a very successful project and when the podcasts go up on the university website, we hope this might inspire other schools to listen to the podcasts and carry out workshops themselves.”
Prof Seth added: “I think they can all be very proud of what they have accomplished. I learnt a lot from engaging with the pupils and I found out what matters to them. Some of the pupils had never been in the colleges and they saw archive documents which to them felt like a privilege.”
The students were shown memorials at Magdalen College including that to Ernst Stadler, a German expressionist poet and Magdalen alumnus.
He was killed in combat in the First World War, but he was not named on the Magdalen War Memorial as he was a foreign combatant. He later received a separate plaque in the college's grounds.
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The visit gave pupils the opportunity to think about the politics of commemoration and they were later encouraged to think about these issues beyond the First World War.
Prof Garfitt is a recently-retired Fellow of Magdalen. He said: “Under the guidance of their dynamic teacher Rebekah Finch, the group of Year 10 pupils clearly made the most of the opportunities offered to extend their understanding of the First World War, how it affected the college community, and how writers in Britain, France and Germany responded to it.”
He continued: “It was great to see them engaging with some of the archive material, deciphering a letter written from the front, asking intelligent questions, filling their minds with impressions from the poetry and prose, and creating their own imaginative responses.”
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He added: “This is an excellent example of leading academic institutions creating high-quality educational resources available to all, via the website of the Faculty of Modern Languages, and so fulfilling their mission to serve the wider community.”
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The podcasts from the writer’s war project will be available to listen to on the Oxford University website later this year.
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