The
songs in calligrams
This year at our school the students tried to produce Calligrams
with lyrics about peace, in French.
Correct definition of Calligram:
"The Calligram is a subtle blend of drawing and
writing", so it is a poem whose letters are used in such a way to draw a
picture of what we talk about; we can say it is the union of words and image.
This literary genre was used in the
early twentieth century by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, who coined
the word (formed by the contraction of calligraphy
and ideogram), in a collection called
(Calligrammes 1918).
Etymologically the word means "Beautiful
Letters "because the word incorporates the Greek adjective calli
and the name gramma that means sign of writing or "letter" and therefore for
Apollinaire it is "writing in beauty."
Why make calligrams?
To discover that a song is a poem written not only to be sung but to be read and looked
at. It is sufficient to get the inspiration
from the phrases of our songs, and to use
the words to create a drawing, because calligrams are
a subtle mix of design and writing, according to ones imagination!
How did we do?
a. Each of us chose our favourite song;
b. We did a pencil drawing of a part we liked in the text;
c. We wrote the text along the lines of the drawing;
d. Then we understood the importance of the meaning of the text by listening to
the song and we became aware of the
meaning of the words.
That is how
we produced all our favourite Songs in Calligrams
While working on the topic of freedom it was very easy for the students to produce calligrams using the words of famous men we studied during the
project in English language: Open Mind
for Active Citizenship (OMAC).
It was fun for the young students to put the words into images and at the
same time they could remember with enthusiasm the text which was the object of their
research and study.
Here are some examples of calligrams:
EXAMPLES:
Comprehensive Institute - Sant'Angelo in Vado (Pesaro-Urbino) Marche Italy