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LearningTranscript
00:00Hello, my name is Amber Ellott, and I'm a journalist specialising in education.
00:05Because education is a devolved issue, what Northern Irish people study in school can
00:09look a little different to their peers from across the rest of the UK.
00:13This goes on all the way up to A-level qualifications, including in key subjects like English.
00:19This means that students who opt to keep studying English literature have some unique poems,
00:24plays and novels that can end up on the required reading list.
00:28Here are a few of the more unique texts Northern Irish students may end up studying.
00:33The first is Translations, by Irish playwright Brian Friel.
00:38Translations is a play about language and the ability to communicate itself.
00:43It tells the story of two brothers, one teaching in an Irish hedge school in County Donegal,
00:48and the other working as a translator for the British Army as they work to create a
00:52map of the area, often renaming places and challenging the sense of identity and history
00:57tied to them as they go.
01:00A-level candidates will also study quite a bit of poetry, including potentially works
01:05by Irish poet Seamus Heaney, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature.
01:11He was perhaps best known for his poetry on the natural world and people's connections
01:16to the landscape, some of which, like Bogland and The Harvest Bow, are among the pieces
01:22students will study.
01:24Finally, another poet who appears on the list is County Down-born Jean Bleakney.
01:29Many of her poems are about plants and botany, or flowers and gardens, and the heavy symbolism
01:34associated with them.
01:36Pupils who study her work will be able to sample much of this rich botanical imagery
01:40for themselves, such as reading about the star-like flowers standing in for an obscured
01:45city sky in nightscapes.