unseen poetry teaching pack (1) - de lacy academy · paragraph of the analysis) ... wrenched from...

P Tait – February 2018

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Unseen Poetry Teaching Pack Contents Page 2 Outline of the unseen poetry approach Page 3 Example notes for Who, What, When, Where Page 4 How to turn those notes into a write-up/example

answer structure Page 5 & 6 Follower & Walking Away – parent & child

relationships Page 7 & 8 Digging & Letters from Yorkshire – relationships Page 9 & 10 Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night & Before

You Were Mine – parent & child relationships Page 11 Woman Work & Overheard in County Sligo – the

role of women Page 12 I wanna be yours & I am very bothered – love Page 13 Sample write-up of I am very bothered Page 14 Comparison – structure & exemplar response


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The key focus with unseen poetry needs to be on telling the story of the poem, initially. WHO WHAT WHEN WHERE (the Why will often come later & should be addressed in the final paragraph of the analysis) This will then be followed up by as selection of quotations which refer to key images/emotions/parts of the writer’s message. There should be a mini conclusion which attempts to sum up the purpose of the poem.


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Read the introduction, e.g. both these poems are about… then write the key words near the poem at the start. Then look for people, places, situations, references to time, anything which gives away a setting, and to try and figure out the general topic of the poem.

Then these notes become the first paragraph. The next step is to highlight 4-8 key phrases (dependent upon ability) which can be analysed which link to the WHO/WHAT/WHEN/WHERE narrative they have identified: “scoring walls like a madman” “bribing time to go” “we’re told not to count but the days mount here” “one more day in the can”

WHO – no freedom, answering letters = prisoners

WHAT – prisoners & what they get up to. Seem bored.

WHERE – prison / prison cells

WHEN – references to videos/Stephen King indicate it to be quite modern


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Write-up: Tell the story of the poem (WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE)

In The Can tells the story of modern prisoners who have nothing to live for and spend their days counting time away in their cells. Despite spending their days doing different things, the routine is very boring.

Pick out quotations in order & relate to narrative Consider: imagery, emotions, message, techniques, etc.

It begins by describing “every second” as a “fishbone that sticks in the throat”, using an image of pain and suffering to demonstrate the slow passage of time. It’s almost suggesting that the boredom they face is like torture and they can’t escape it. They are desperate for time to move on (“bribing time to go”), which suggests they’d do anything to fast forward in their lives. If they have a release date, they will slowly approach their freedom, but this could also imply that death would be a better option if they are facing a life sentence. Either way, the suffering they endure as they are clock watching emphasises how difficult their experiences are. (do as many paragraphs like this as possible in the time allowed)

Sum up the poem’s purpose/ message (address the WHY)

The writer is reflecting on the agony we experience in waiting for something we desperately desire. Here it shows how the only thing that keeps the prisoners going and prevents them from going mad is counting the days until their “release”, even if they are old geriatrics with not much time left.


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More pairs of poems are on the following pages. All linked by topic, so they can be used for single analyses or for comparisons.

Follower

By Seamus Heaney

My father worked with a horse-plough, His shoulders globed like a full sail strung Between the shafts and the furrow. The horse strained at his clicking tongue. An expert. He would set the wing And fit the bright steel-pointed sock. The sod rolled over without breaking. At the headrig, with a single pluck Of reins, the sweating team turned round And back into the land. His eye Narrowed and angled at the ground, Mapping the furrow exactly. I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake, Fell sometimes on the polished sod; Sometimes he rode me on his back Dipping and rising to his plod. I wanted to grow up and plough, To close one eye, stiffen my arm. All I ever did was follow In his broad shadow round the farm. I was a nuisance, tripping, falling, Yapping always. But today It is my father who keeps stumbling Behind me, and will not go away.


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WALKING AWAY - Cecil Day Lewis It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day – A sunny day with leaves just turning, The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play Your first game of football, then, like a satellite Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away Behind a scatter of boys. I can see You walking away from me towards the school With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free Into a wilderness, the gait of one Who finds no path where the path should be. That hesitant figure, eddying away Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem, Has something I never quite grasp to convey About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay. I have had worse partings, but none that so Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly Saying what God alone could perfectly show – How selfhood begins with a walking away, And love is proved in the letting go.


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Digging by Seamus Heaney Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee was levered firmly. He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep To scatter new potatoes that we picked, Loving their cool hardness in our hands. By God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man. My grandfather cut more turf in a day Than any other man on Toner’s bog. Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up To drink it, then fell to right away Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods Over his shoulder, going down and down For the good turf. Digging. The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I’ve no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it.


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Letters from Yorkshire by Maura Dooley In February, digging his garden, planting potatoes, he saw the first lapwings return and came indoors to write to me, his knuckles singing as they reddened in the warmth. It’s not romance, simply how things are. You out there, in the cold, seeing the seasons turning, me with my heartful of headlines feeding words onto a blank screen. Is your life more real because you dig and sow? You wouldn’t say so, breaking ice on a waterbutt, clearing a path through snow. Still, it’s you who sends me word of that other world pouring air and light into an envelope. So that at night, watching the same news in different houses, our souls tap out messages across the icy miles.


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Do not go gentle into that good night Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


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Before You Were Mine by Carol Ann Duffy

I’m ten years away from the corner you laugh on

with your pals, Maggie McGeeney and Jean Duff.

The three of you bend from the waist, holding

each other, or your knees, and shriek at the pavement.

Your polka-dot dress blows round your legs. Marilyn.

I’m not here yet. The thought of me doesn’t occur

in the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie tomorrows

the right walk home could bring. I knew you would dance

like that. Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the close

with a hiding for the late one. You reckon it’s worth it.

The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh?

I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics,

and now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square

till I see you, clear as scent, under the tree,

with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?

Cha cha cha! You’d teach me the steps on the way home from Mass,

stamping stars from the wrong pavement. Even then

I wanted the bold girl winking in Portobello, somewhere

in Scotland, before I was born. That glamorous love lasts

where you sparkle and waltz and laugh before you were mine.


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I wanna be yours

I wanna be your vacuum cleaner breathing in your dust

I wanna be your Ford Cortina I will never rust

If you like your coffee hot let me be your coffee pot

You call the shots I wanna be yours

I wanna be your raincoat for those frequent rainy days I wanna be your dreamboat when you want to sail away Let me be your teddy bear

take me with you anywhere I don’t care

I wanna be yours

I wanna be your electric meter I will not run out

I wanna be the electric heater you’ll get cold without

I wanna be your setting lotion hold your hair in deep devotion Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean that’s how deep is my devotion

I am Very Bothered

I am very bothered when I think of the bad things I have done in my life. Not least that time in the chemistry lab

when I held a pair of scissors by the blades and played the handles

in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner; then called your name, and handed them over.

O the unrivalled stench of branded skin

as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in, then couldn't shake off the two burning rings. Marked,

the doctor said, for eternity.

Don't believe me, please, if I say that was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen,

of asking you if you would marry me.


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Sample analysis of ‘I am very bothered’: The poem introduces a persona who recalls an experience at school from his past of handing over a pair of scissors to someone which he has heated up, causing them to burn and brand the skin of the person who touched them. The poet tells us that he is “very bothered” by the memory of “branding” his fellow classmate with a pair of heated scissors. We could take this literally, but it is more likely a use of sarcasm showing faked remorse. The probable reason for this would be because he feels a sense of pride/bravado in what he did, which likely masks his inner anguish at disappointment at himself. He uses sensual imagery, such as “playing with the handles in the naked lilac flame” to highlight to us that this is to do with someone’s first experience of relationships/love/desire – a teenager in a school science lab. These feelings have been important for a long time and the poet confirms this by describing it as lasting “for eternity” – the same amount of time a perfect relationship (joined in marriage) should last for. As an adult, he is clearly more in control of his emotions and feelings and can process the information available to him better. He makes more rational decisions and deals with his thoughts and feelings. He admits that the time he was clumsy and was doing things in a “butterfingered” way. Some of the language choices, such as “stench”, “branded” and “burning” are words that directly contrast with the stereotypical images and sensory description to do with love. This contrast is effective because it shows just how confused the poet must have been and how he could not express himself emotionally. Stylistically, he uses punctuation (subordinate clauses and commas) to highlight the words “marked” and “at thirteen” to the reader, emphasising the permanent nature of what he did and the young age at which he did it to the reader. This has clearly had a lasting effect on him, as he is still thinking about it many years later. The reader is encouraged to recall any times in their own lives where juvenile mistakes, in love or otherwise, have impacted upon their lives. They are expected to think about their own first “butterfingered” experience with love and how that, whilst extreme, this poet is trying to explain how all teenage experiences with love can be traumatic and live long in the memory.


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Comparison: Think of 4/5 ‘sub topics’ of the poems. For example, for Follower & Walking Away you could use: Parent & Child relationships:

• Dedication vs heartache • Independence • Difficulty in moving on • How parents affect you • Closeness/intimacy

These would then provide a structure for each of the ‘content’ paragraphs for the comparison.

Tell the story of the two poems (WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE)

Follower is about a writer who admired his father’s talents as a farmer when he was younger, but grew up to not follow in his footsteps, whereas Walking Away is about the how emotional it is for a parent to let a child have their own independence. They both explore how close and intimate parent-child relationships are.

Develop the key words from the plan into sentences & embed quotations around. A good general discussion is better than an overly technical analysis.

In Follower, Heaney admires his father’s skill & dedication to his work and declares how he was an “expert” who inspired him as “I wanted to grow up and plough”. This admiration is part of the reason why he loves his father, whereas the love shown in Walking Away is being challenged as the writer is having to let his son take his first steps towards independence at school, which is heart-breaking for him as until now he has spent little time apart from him. (do as many paragraphs like this as possible in the time allowed)

Sum up connections of each poem

Follower is trying to show us that we will all become our parents & that our perspective changes as we get older and parents can go from idols to something of a burden. Whereas Walking Away’s main goal is to show us how painful it is to let something go that you truly love.


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This pack is copyrighted to Delta Academies Trust. The work here is for the sole use of Delta students and has been provided as a revision/study aid for students sitting their GCSE English Literature exams.

unseen poetry teaching pack (1) - de lacy academy · paragraph of the analysis) ... wrenched from...

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