Fiction Adaptation: CHOSEN POEM + RESEARCH

After consideration of each poem I decided to further elaborate on the poem 'Summer in England, 1914' by Alice Meynell.

 

I felt like this was the best poem to adapt as I loved the contrast of the mood throughout the poem and how Alice talks about 'the calm before the storm' meaning at the beginning of the poem Alice discusses what the environment is like during summer and how it's calm and peaceful.
The poem's name stood out to me from the very start - the title: Summer in England. It immediately sounds odd as Alice sarcastically makes the war sound quite casual within the title as it's obvious that a 'typical' summer doesn't consist of a war.

I was straight away drawn to the style of the poem Alice has taken on. I really like how she discusses that while the world looks beautiful and the natural cycle of the climate carries on the war is also taking place and she doesn't ignore it with the random outbursts of 'death' that is mentioned throughout the poem. For example Alice says ''and when this chaste young silver sun went up softly, a thousand shattered men, one went corruption, heaped the plain, after a league - long throb of pain.'' we can see that she used a juxtaposed contrast of whilst the sun is rising beautifully, men are falling painfully which is quite a sad way of looking at the deaths.

Alice says in the first paragraph ''Most happy year!'' to show that the war wasn't expected, people where happy generally and the summer was gracefully turning into autumn. However towards the beginning of the 3rd paragraph everything begins to go down hill, she comments on soldiers being 'shot through the eyes' and it is such a contrast as a few lines ago she was talking about apples and berries being beautiful.

I really liked the contrasting throughout the poem of good and bad and thought the style could be adapted to the screen in many different ways and genres. To get more of an in-depth into the poem I decided to do some background research on the poem and look at who Alice Meynell was.

Alice Meynell, born in England in 1874 was extremely passionate and influenced by religion, this is why it's heavily referenced throughout her poems. Alice was a poet and campaigner for women's suffrage. She has written many poems however they are all extremely under rated although after I looked at them they all seem extremely passionate and in depth whilst referencing religion a lot. 

I found that when reading the poem, Alice focused a lot on contrasting between two things back and forth. She would speak of flowers and berries, and then suddenly talk about how soldiers are getting shot through the eyes. I liked the contrast as I believe I can convey a contrast between beautiful things and disgusting things in my film. Alice also focus' on the seasonal changes and cycles from summer to autumn which once again is a contrast. I took from the poem that Alice is trying to show normal life continuing and seasons continuing, however whilst all this is happening and flowers are blossoming, men at war are dying and for them it's not as beautiful as everything looks from the outside.

I also found that in the poem religion is heavily used at the end, I feel like Alice is using religion as  way to to cover up the soldiers death. Alice says in her poem, ''the soldier dying, dies upon a kiss, the very kiss of christ''. This makes the death sound like it has been rewarded in some way by christ and that it's okay that he died as he died in a 'christian death' as it was in place of his friend and they now have received the 'kiss of christ' reward. I think this is a way to cover up the real emotions going on inside Alice as she doesn't want to hear the truth that actually, it wasn't such a beautiful and peaceful death and that he didn't deserve to die at all as this is too much to handle.

After looking into the background of Alice a little and the poem, I feel like I know more about the poem and what exactly was going on when she wrote what she did, and wrote strange contrasts. I think religion plays a huge part in what she says and the reasons behind everything - which allows the poem to have a more sweet ending.