04 Mar 2025
Our Year 12 Advanced English class visualised classic romantic poem Holy Thursday by William Blake last week.
The students are currently focusing on the poetry of John Keats, a successor to William Blake. They have also been supplementing reading Keats’ poetry with a screening of Jane Campion’s film Bright Star, a dramatization of the life of the poet.
To put Keats into perspective, the class have also been studying Keats’ forebearers and the time he lived in. Both themes are evident in William Blake’s poem Holy Thursday, the poem which the class were asked to illustrate.
The poem itself is an indictment of the working conditions children faced during the Industrial Revolution. The class experimented with pencil and charcoal to highlight the gritty, monochrome aesthetic of this coal powered era.
“One of the core skills we are trying to cultivate is creatively responding to texts,” explains teacher Martin Maley, “This includes not only written responses but visual responses too. It helps them really connect with the composer.”
Headline sketch by Ayushi Ghosh
