Text 4- Grandpa's Soup

Text 4- Grandpa's Soup

1. Contexts of Production

   • Poet remembers the soup her grandpa used to make and the entimental importance of it to her.
   • It is linked with memories of her grandpa, and how no soup will ever match his
   • Conveys delight she has in the soup but is tinged with sadness as they will never have it
   • Jackie Kay recalls the childhood memories she rememebers with her grandfather in scotland, and we know how fond she was because there are no negative memoreis throughout the poem

2. Structure and Form

   • Two main stanzas- first talks about the soup as a whole, then moves onto the grandpa and the love they have for him
     • First stanza uses little grammar to separte the lines, just a dash, question mark and commas. This allows the description of the soup to flow, and how the memories have come flooding back to her. She wants the reader to share these memories with her, making it ryhthmic and memorable.
   • Childish persona felt throughout, first person narrative from a young child

3. Word choice and sound patterns

   • Grandpa's soup- use of possesion tells us it belongs to him- its the main focus of the poem
   • Bold opening, emphatic, shows the childish nature and is almost a challenge towards the reader
   • 'Diced carrots the perfect size' Repetition is seen in this opening, suggesting again the childish voice but also to highlight how perfect the soup is
     • Figurative Language: This shows metephorically how no one will replace her grandpa. He was perfect to her.
   • Metephorical image show that the soup is so unreachable, its so vast and incredible- much like the sea
   • Hyperbole used at the beginning of the second stanza, along with enjambent, shows how big the love is that the child has for the soup and the grandpa
   • 'Och' Gives the poem a sense of place and tells us that they are scottish
     • She wants the reader to know about the grandpa like she does, and understand what he was like. The scottish dialect shows how she describes him to us
   • Strong memory of childhood linked with the grandpa and his soup
   • Soup remains prominant, but the granpa won't
     • Ends on a rhyming couplet