Poet and memoirist Bruce Weigl says in support of the Blood Garden project: By employing a reliable narrator’s steady voice, Pam Bernard builds lean poems around surprising and deeply human insights into the war that changed human consciousness.
In that spirit, I offer Blood Garden, along with an array of interdisciplinary tools, as a way to reach students, to teach them what traditional texts often cannot teach: the deeply human dimensions of war.
And as an interdisciplinary instrument, the book would work well with any course in which war is a topic, including history, literature and writing, even philosophy and psychology.
Editor and publisher, Tom Lombardo, says: Blood Garden is an important addition to war poetry, and needs to get into the hands of those who most need its wisdom.
Here is a brief list of what I can offer you, individually or in any combination:
BOOK: At the core is the book itself, available as a supplemental text.
Blood Garden is ninety-seven pages, with twelve vintage photographs, drawn from
the collections of the National Archives and the Imperial War Museum, among other sources. The war poems are interspersed with italicized flashbacks of Raymond’s boyhood, which serve, as one reader offers, as both a solace and as a ringing reminder
of the loss of innocence.
READING: Reading of the poems—if possible, with a PowerPoint slide presentation, concurrently shown, of additional vintage images of the War. Questions from the audience following the reading are encouraged.
CLASSROOM VISIT: This can be designed to accommodate your class.
For example, it might be consist of a short reading with PowerPoint slides, along with a brief overview of the war followed by class discussion. The emphasis could be on the language of poetry and how it is be used to express such things as war, or could be more focused on the war itself and discussion. A writer’s workshop might be a part of this.
WRITER’S WORKSHOP: Designed to build on the reading, this could be a class or seminar addressing the writing of poems—about war and conflict in particular, or any subject. Along with drafting poems, there could be deep readings of selected poems about war, written by contemporary veterans like Yusef Komunyakaa, Bruce Weigl, and Brian Turner, and non-veterans Carol Dine and Linda McCarriston. This will require more time than a typical class.
INDIVIDUAL DESIGN: We could create an event or class for your students that suits your particular needs. For example, you may want to gather several classes for the reading and general discussion, then offer only the literature/writing students the Writer’s Workshop. Or you may offer the Writer’s Workshop as an elective for any interested students who attend the reading and discussion.
FEES:__________________________________________________________
BOOK: (Blood Garden: An Elegy for Raymond)...............................$18
READING (to any sized group, with slides and discussion):.............$300
CLASSROOM VISIT (reading, slides, discussion, and
an introduction to writing about war):.................................................$400
WRITER’S WORKSHOP (reading, slides, discussion,
writer’s workshop):...............................................................................$600
WRITER’S WORKSHOP (only).......................................................$400
INDIVIDUAL DESIGN:................................Price determined by design