Poems

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'Eat Me' - Patience Agbabi

The speaker recounts the ways in which a man, presumably her partner, insists she eats a lot of food because he likes 'big girls'. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker weighs 30 stone. She is so large that she cannot leave the house. The day she becomes 39 stones after having olive oil poured down her throat, the speaker rolls over on top of her partner- presumably during sex. Her weight suffocates him and he dies. Six hours later, the speaker is left contemplating eating his body.

Commentary- With its echos of a grisly fairy tale, this gleefully cabre poem is an exploration of power- specifically the sexual power dynamics between men and women. The speaker is initially presented as passive. She does as she is told uncomplainingly. Indeed, her only pleasure is reduced to the rush of fast food' The female speaker is objectified by the gaze of her male partner, as he asks her to walk around the bed so that he can watch her 'broad/ belly wobble'. However, the dynamic starts to shift in the eighth tercet as the speaker 'allowed him to stroke/ my globe of a cheek'. The speaker now has the power as she appears to use her partner's desire and 'greed' against him. This is given ultimate expression in his suffocation during sex and her probable cannibalism of him.

The poem makes use of a persona: the speaker is a distinctive character in her own right. Alongside the direct speech of her partner ('Open wide') there is a strong sense of a spoken voice throughout colloquialisms ('When I hit thirty'); elliptical sentences ('Didn't even taste it') frequent simple, direct sentences ('I was his Jacuzzi') which seems to suggest the speakers uncritical, unreflective acceptance of the situation

Despite its skill in capturing the voice of the narrator the poem is tightly structured and has a very regular form. it is written in tercets with assonantal half-rhyme (for example, the short 'e' sound in'shipwreck...bed...flesh') and a regular scheme (AAA). The tercets each end with a full stop, with the notable exception of the sixth, where the enjambment perhaps represents the 'tidal wave of flesh' spreading out. The exuberance of the language- and the excesses described in the narrative itself- are therefore in dynamic tension with this highly controlled and regular form.

Agbabi also deploys a remarkable array of sound effects. For example, the alliteration in 'judder like a juggernaut' seems to make the line itself wobble. Note also the sensuous fricatives and repetition of 'His flesh, my flesh flowed' to describe their sex together. Agbabi also uses simple repetition to chilling effect as the male partner says together: 'I like/ big girls, soft girls, girls I can burrow inside'. There is also anaphora in the seventh stanza: 'too fat to leave...to fat to use...too fat to be called chubby', which reinforces the excesses of her consumption as well as her powerlessness. The final stanza consists of three consecutive ends stopped lines. The pace, therefore, slows as the poem leads towards its final, shocking line, which acts almost as a gruesome punchline to the absurd situation being described: 'There was nothing else left in the house to eat.' The end-stopped lines might also indicate the speaker's growing confidence and power.

The speaker describes herself as swelling 'like forbidden fruit': the allusion of the Garden of Eden in this simile links their relationship to a particularly illicit desire and perhaps foreshadows the disastrous consequences. Perhaps surprisingly, there is also a reoccurring pattern of figurative language associated with the seas and the exotic. Note the remarkable sentence of metaphors in the sixth stanza; 'His breadfruit', 'His desert island', 'a beached whale', 'tidal wave'. Her body is her partner's possession, and the traditional natural poetical images of female objectification are- like much else in the poem- taken to extremes. The images also suggest both incapacity ('benched wale') and power ('tidal wave'). The partner's fattening up of the woman ultimately destroys him. The nautical conceit is extended in the metaphorical reference to 'my globe of a cheek' and the images of drowning. Her suffocation of him is described as silencing of his language, his authority and, therefore, his claims on her: she 'drowned his dying sentence out'

Themes

- Sexual and gender politics are a distinctive concern in 21st-century poetry. Identity is increasingly understood to be fractured and illusory and there is a heightened critical awareness of patriarchal and colonial power. Poems such as 'Eat Me' take on a female perspective, and seek to highlight and question gender inequalities. The speaker in 'Eat Me' is subjected to the controlling and sexualised male gaze of her partner.

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Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass- Simon Armitage

The poem begins by describing in detail how a chainsaw is prepared- it is taken from its hood, oiled and attached to a power chord. The speaker turns on the chainsaw, which comes powerfully to life. The chainsaw destroys the pampas grass easily. The speaker then sets fire to what is left of the grass. Soon, however, the pampas grass grows back and the chainsaw remains on its hook below the stairs.

Commentary- Typically Armitage, this poem uses a persona because it adopts the vibrant voice of someone we can consider, in varying degrees to be separate from Armitage himself. The speaker in the poem - drawn towards the power of the vividly described chainsaw- relishes the destruction of the pampas grass, but is made to look rather absurd as the pampas grass but is made to look rather absurd as the pampas grass simply grows back. The pride and relish of the speaker are shown to be wildly- and humorously- misplaced.

To add a dynamic depth to this persona, the poem adopts a conversational tone. The sentence length varies dramatically- note the interesting minor sentence in the fifth stanza - 'Overkill', which seems to reinforce the speaker's pride. there are also frequent examples of colloquial idioms and expressions, such as 'finish things off', 'stealing the show' and 'I left it a year', which often serve to amplify the speaker's pride.

This impression of a spoken voice is also reinforced by the irregular form. Armitage uses a relaxed free verse as he varies line and stanza length markedly. The poem's form also confirms the excess and power that the poem describes, and so it matched closely to the content. Like the chainsaw itself, the stanzas- with their 'perfect disregard' for regularity and frequent enjambment- are straining to break free.

This s not to say that the poem is without carefully crafted patterns. The sentence shortens towards the end of the poem, as the speaker and chainsaw shrink back from their folly. Note also the anaphora in the third stanza - 'and felt, and felt' - emphasising the fear and awe the speaker feels for the chainsaw's power. There is also an interesting syntactical patterning. To suggest the speaker's enthusiasm for the destruction, the clauses often begin with the subject 'I', followed by an -ed verb, especially in the fifth and sixth stanzas: ' I touched', 'I dabbed','I lifted', 'I ripped' and 'I raked'.

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the poem, however, is its use of imagery. The personification of the chainsaw is clear: it is described as 'grinding its teeth'; it has a 'bloody desire' and a 'sweet tooth/ for the flesh of the face'. A madman, perhaps, or a violent animal. In contrast, the pampas grass is personified s lordly, clam, self-contained: 'sunning itself' and 'wearing a new crown'.

Chainsaw versus pampas grass is clearly, therefore a poem about power and conflict. The title alone confirms this. The violence of the chainsaw, the speaker's boastful pride, the pampas grass quiet acquiescence and subsequent victory. However, we could also read the poem as an exploration of the gender of masculinity and feminity.

We ascribed traditional male behaviour to the actions of the speaker and the chainsaw. As though it were drinking a pint of lager, the chainsaw metaphorically 'knocked back a quarter -pint of engine oil'. Even its dreams are 'man-made'. The speaker is also stereotypically masculine in his exaggerated relish at serving and tearing the grass in a metaphorical and destructive 'game'. The feminine natural grass, meanwhile, has 'feathers/ and plumes' and is described dismissively as having 'footstools, cushions and tufts'. The grass is also described in very feminine terms as having a 'dark, secret/ warmth' and can resist by closing and mending behind the blade, 'like cutting at water or air with a knife'. The pampas grass, of course, ultimately wins the battle and the speaker is described in the absurd awkward position of looking on 'from the upstairs window like the midday moon' - suggesting how tentative and out of place he has become.

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Material - Ros Barber

'Material' begins with a reflection on the coth handkercheifs used by the poet's mother. barber associates these handkercheifs intially with he rown childhood, before chnaging the focus to th eiwder consideration of a vanished way of life associated with her mother's generation. The poet them contrasts the way she brings up her own children witht he way her mother raised her. The poem concludes with Barber acknowledging that the mordern ay of living and parenting in her own 'material' to work with as best she can.

Commentary- Barber begins with the object of handkercheif, and uses it to explore a range of different ideas and experiences. The poem's cheif concerns are with lost history and the hcnaging way in which mothers bring up their children.

Barber correlates the disappearance of the handekercheif with a vanished world of deparment stores and headscareves. All are lost becuase 'those who used to buy them died'. Barber especially eokes this disappeared world in the concise characeter sketches in the fifth octave. This suggest a familiar, close-knit and supportive community of friends, family and neighbours. On surface, Barber is mourning this lost way of life, with its 'soft and hidden history'. Howver she avoids falling into the cliched trap of arguing simply that everything was better in the past. Indeed, she even acknowledges that 'Nostalgia only makes me old' Note the figurative and frigethening 'painted talons' Mrs White or the rather deadened uniformity in her repeated instruction 'step- togther, step-together, step-together'. Barber also remebers thinking handkerchiefs were the 'naffest Christmas gift you'd get and an embarassment of lace'

The handkercheif is also closely associated witht he poet's mother. The clear and direct opening line immeditately establishes this as she if figuratively described as 'the hanky queen'. Barber presents her as loving and attentive; she would have a handkercheif, 'always, up her sleeve' to scrub against her face, or 'smudge the rouge'. Her gentle fondness for her mother is also reinforced in the humourous image of the hankies falling in love and mating, 'raising little squares'.

This contrast with Barber's depiction of her own methods of parenting represented by the'scratchy and disposable' tissue bought from 'late-night garges and shops' She lets her children watch television to give her time to work and she never wipes their noses. She even admits, in a self-critical rhetorical question in the eighth octave, to never having any tissues in her bag, let alone handkerchiefs. but there is more to it than a mere percieved shortcoming in her own character. The key line, reinforced by a rare instance of caesurea, is at the beginning of the final octave: 'But it isnt mine. Ill let it go'

'it', here is the past and her mothers ay of bringing up her children. Barber recognises that the role of the role of a mother has changed by the end of the 20th century: Barber works and she must balance these demands with childcare. At the end of the poem, she imagines fondly her mother giving this advice: the paper tissues - modern motherhood, with all its pressures - are the only 'material' she has to work with.

'Material' is writeen in octaves with largely ABCBDEFE rhyme (or half-rhyme) scheme. many lines are in iambic tetrameter such as the opening three lines in the poem:

"My mother was the hanky queen

when hanky meant a thing of cloth,

not paper tissues bought in packs"

Each stanza also ends with a fulls stop and is a statement of a sepaprte, self- contained reflection r mememory. A regular form such as this is assocaited with older, more tradtional peotry, and so evokes the lost workld being described, as well as recalling its restrictions

Rhyming connects words together- there are rhymes in this poem which draws attention to a contrast, such as 'wool' and 'malls' or perhaps, 'brood' and 'lassitude'. They might connect in other ways, such as 'purified' and 'died', or the patricularyly noteworthy final rhyme - 'disposbale', 'material' and 'will' - three words which could be said to sum up the key ideas in the poem. Rhyme also underscores the often humorous tone: 'not' and 'snot' being a particularly bathetic example.

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John Burnside, 'History'

In the days after the terrorist attacks on 11th Septemeber 2001, the poet is on the beach with his wife and his son Lucas. The beach is on the east coast of Scotland near an RAF base in Leuchars. Above them, 'war planes' fly, presumably on training manoeuvres. The poet has a 'dread / of what may come' after the attacks. His son is rock-pooling, looking for interesting shells and fish. The family also files a kite. Burnside reflects upon the best way to live in the world 'and do not harm'. He is sceptical of notions of race and nation states. He concludes tentaively that we should be aware of the ever-changing environment around us, and play attention to the thing which cannot be saved.

Commentary- In many ways, this is the most ambitiously philosophical poem in the anthology- it asks big questions about how to be at home in the world in the face of the vast, imperosnal and destructive forces of history. The poem is also located in the Romantic tradition in its appreciation of the transient beauties of the natural environment at risk from mankind.

The title 'history' is grand and general. It announces the philosophcal concerns of the poem , but it is undercut quickly in two ways: the specificity of the subititle and the conrast with the first line of the poem, which is a singular word, 'Today;. Already there is a tension at play between gernal and local.

The poet on the beach with his family is reminded of the dread of the wider would and the forces of history as the 'war plane' from the nearby RAF base 'a cambered and turned / in the morning light'. Even a gasoline smell from the military base can be smelt 'gusting across'. Burnside along iwth others on the beach is filled with a 'muffled dread/of what may come' global poltics and nation states are shown to be intruding on the perosnal and private. interestingly, the poet in a symbolically relgious act kneels down in the sand with his son in a quiet byt resilient gesture. In contrast to the war panes, the poet and his family are trying to find 'evidence of life' and hope, rather than destruction. Although all he find are fragment - 'driftwork', 'smudges of weed' and 'shred of razorfish'.

However, Burnside argues that these fragments- things which are always changing and are 'irredeemable' - are where we must look in order to survive spirtially. Therefore the peom is threaded with such images as it embodies what it is arguing it is being attentive to the immediate world. The sand is descirbed metaphorically as 'spinning off in ribbons' - shifting, moving and impossible to pin down. We have also 'distance and the shapes/ we find in water', where water's formless qualities become a playful space for the imagination. The 'sit and tides' and are always changing, pulled invisibly by the 'drift and tug of celestial bodies. We are unable to live in the moment and notice the 'shifts of light' becuase, Burnside argues we are 'confined by modern notions of 'property' and the 'world we own'. Our perspective on the world is narrowed and weighed down to merely the material things that we possess or that we think belong to our nation state.

The notion of fragments find its embodiement in perhaps the most distincitve aspect of this poem its form. Lines are frequently short and irregular as though they are suspended in space. Individual lines, such as 'gathering shells', 'transitive gold' and 'all nerve and line' are given a very delicate vuneralbility a sense that they will be lost in the space which seems about to wash over them. These lines are also fragments in their own right , and therefore complement the patterns of fregmentary images. The form, with the frequent line breaks working against the logic of syntax, might also suggest something about the difficulty of articulation, of what we try to 'dream about behind the names', behind the words.

Interestingly, the poem becomes more regular when it is being reflective rather than despcriptive. In places, 'History' is in fact, highly formal with a regular metre. The following three lines, for example, are all in iambic pentameter:

"at time I think what makes us who we are

is neither kinship nor our given states

but something lost between the world we own"

This is the stately blank verse of Shakespeare or Wordsworth, a traditional - histroical? form which serves as a contrast to the free verse of other parts of the poem. It is perhpas no coincidence that these reflective rather than descriptive lines are themseleves exploring 'traditional' notions of a nation's history. The overall effect of these formal shifts from regular to irregular, from the complete to the fragmented, reasonates with the flux and flow of the landscape being described.

Although the poem has very physical and highly specific setting there is also searching perhaps yearning for the metaphysical 'beyond'. Being attentive as the poem is, to the ever changing environment is in itself a kind of prayer to the natural world. However the key metaphysical symbol in the poem is kite-flying. It appears three times, and helps to give the peom a cohesion. When flying a kite, their bodies are 'fixed and anchored to the shore' and also, in an interesting metaphore, 'plugged into the sky' by an invisible wind - a powerful visual symbol of the poems search for metaphyscial answers.

Children are another important symbol in the poem. The son, Lucas, represents an innocent ideal, a common idea in Romantic poetry. Buurnside kneels down to join him in the search for life. But it towars the end of th epeom where the symbolic value of th echild is made claer. burnside wonders how we can live in the world and do no harm. Prephaps he says we should aim to gain the innoncence and attentive joy of 'a toddler on a beach' fascinated by the 'pattern on a shell'

The tone of 'History' is pensive and solemn and suits the overall seriousness of the poems ideas. This relatively long lyric peom consists of only three sentences which perhaps helps to establish this tone. With such long, complex syntax, our attention is drawn naturally towards the full stop. The word that precedes the pause is therefore given emphasis. This fulls stop, this pause, is used to great effect at the very end of the poem - the syntax is manipulated cleverly as the long sentence builds towards the powerful concluding couplet, which beautifully encapsulates the poem's ideas:

"patient afraid;but still, through everything

attentive to the irredeemable"

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'An Easy Passage'- Julia Copus

On a sunny day, a 13-year-old has just climbed up on to the porch roof of her house while her friend watches from the street below. It is like that the girl on the roof sneaked out without her mother's permission and she has not been trusted witht he house key. The girl climbs through an open windowand into the house. The wo girls are also observed by a rather frustrated secretary over the road, whose head is full of various and perhaps abortive plans for the future

Commentary- The apparent simplicity of this poem in which, effectively, only one event takes place disguises an impressive range of complex methods and ideas. The passge of the girl from the sunny outside to the shady arkness of the house could be read as an allegory of the progression from childhood to adulthood. The image of the girl, who is most of the poem poised between inside and outside, embodies the concept of liminality which lies at the centre of the poem that is, the girl is at a threshold of two states, but occupying neither. So it is perhaps no suprise hat the poem contains a range of opposites: Inside/outside; dark; light; childhood/adulthood;work/play.

The form of 'An Easy Passage' matches the content brilliantly. The poem's sustained, almost slow-motion ocus on a single moment finds a visual orrespondence in the hsape of the poem: a single stanza, with long, enjambed lines. The overall effects is of both stasis and anticipation. Copus' clever use of complex syntax and long sentences also contributes to this effect. Sructurely, the poem is book-ended by two very long sentences in present tense (of 13 and 21 lines respectively) each slowing down what little action there is.

The childhood which the girls seem about to leave behind is asscoiated closely with light and colour. Light seems emnate from within the girls themselves. This internal source of light might suggest something about their inherent innocence and freedom. The girl on the roof is also wearing gold earring and an anklet long with the possibly garish nail vanish. All of these seem to ctch the light in the same way and some help to suggest the delicate, possibly even vulnerbale, qualities of the girls and of childhood in general.

The girls are contrasted with the adult world which surrounds them. The street is descibribed etaphorically as having a menacing gaze whih suggests the ways in which adult survelliance seeks to control and limit children. The mother does not seem to trust seem to trust her daughter wuth any adult responsibilities, which in turn suggest the worry and anxiety of parenthood. The uninviting electroplating factory is a glimpse into the dreary world work which awaits the girls. However, it is in the character sketch of the red-faced secretary where the adult world finds its greatest expression in the poem. He rhead is full of future plans which we can infer, she will never fulfil. She is also reading an astrology column, another implied reference to the future. The conversational phrases sed to describe the girl's ages and semi-nakedness suggests tha this is the secretary's voice. She looks disparingly at the freedom that these young girls seem to have- and the fact that they are wearing bikinis. perhaps it is this, rather than the hot weather, that is making the secretary blush. The problems with future adulthood are also suggested symbollically in the narror windowsill and the dangerous drop of the staircase that the girl is about to step onto.

The poems structure is also carefully crafted. Copus takes full advantage of the opportuniteis f a third perosn narrator by describing the evnts from a number of different perspectives. the poem begins with the girl's perspective. We are given access to her thoughtss, such as reflections on her waiting friend who she has romantic feelings for. In almost the exact mid-point tof the poem, the adult narrorte intrudes with a direct question which sums uo so many of the key ideas in the peom about childhood and adult hood.

How can the gril comprehend or foresee what he future has in store? She blissfully does not know of the difficulties of her forthcoming adulthood. The world becomes less accomadating more different and uncomfortable- physcially and perhaps also psychologically the older we get. This more distant viewpoint is then contued until the description of the secreatry. It is from her perspective that the firend is described. the sectretary looks uo to see the girl and perhaps her own childhood.

The perspective and structure of the poem therefore chimes witht he poem's central concerns- it moves from the brightly-lit girl to the world-weary viewpoint of the adult.

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Tishani Doshi- 'The Deliverer'

This short poem sequence tells the story of an Indian newborn baby girl who is abadndoned becuase she is not a boy. The baby is the cared for in a convent in the state of Keralain India The narrotor's mother, the deleiverer of the peom's title, is a temporary foster mother who arranges for the baby to be adopted by an Americian couple. The second peom in the sequence describes the foster mother's arrival in America witht he baby. She hands the baby over to the adopting parents. In the third and final poem in the sequence, the girl has grown up. The poem goes back to the day of her birth and subsequent abandonment.

Commentary- This shocking poem sequence has at its heart the abandonment of this daugter, but it also engages with ideas about motherhood. For such a short poem, there is a network of different parent/child relationships in the poem, each, in some way, disrupting conventional views of the family: the baby's biological mother who tosses her onto a pile of other babies; the nun who looks after the abandoned babies; the deliverer who for a short while, effectively fosters the baby as she takes her to America, and is also the poet's own mother; and the adoptive American parents. The situation in the poem is not unique or made up: because of a preference for having boys in the family, some parents in India kill or abandon baby girls. Also Doshi own mother did indeed bring an abandoned child over from India to an adoptive Americian couple.

It is one of the more socially engaged poems from the anthology as it seeks to draw attention to this practice in India. Doshi's compassion for the newborn babies and anger at their treatment is made very clear by the poem's diction and use of lists. As early as the third line we have the unembelliesed and shockingly general triad of proscibed characteristics COnsider the extended list in the second tercet as a further example.

The verbs are foreground synthatically by being placed at the beggining of the clause. The list itself implies the ongoing and pervasive nature of the events being described. The pitilness, apparently unfeeling process of the birth is conveyed in part by the hsort verbs Doshi uses towards the end of the poem: the slithering of the babies as they leave their mothers' bodies certainly has unpleasant assciations; and the mothers throw the baby onto a pile of other discarded infants.Doshi also uses a macabre pun as life is described as being squeezed out, a pun whch sematically contains both birth and death.

The diction and th form complement each other in 'The Deliverer'. The lines are short and frquently end-stopped. The tercets are terse and flinty, and the sentences are sort and stripped down. The overall structure of the poem equences are short and stripped down. The overall structure of the poem sequence is circular, indicating the events described are ongoing and not and not unique. Perhaps for heightened emotional impact, it ends t the beginning, with the moment of the girls birth. However, the brutality of the birth is tempered by the render's awareness that the girl did survive, due to the combination of the care and compassion of the nun, the deliverer and her adoptive parents.

In the face of this horror, who or what is to blame? our thoughts might turn to the mothers themselves who murder or abandon the babies. However, the final lines complicate this as the mothers are described as trudging back home to sleep again, with their husbands. The exhausted, numbed verb which begins the final line suggests that the mothers choose not to reflect upon the brutalising experience. Their act of sleeping again with their husband implies passive victimhood in both their material and sexual obligations- the sex is as difficult as birth. But it is the adverb which concludes the poem, and which reminds us that the events described will repat and repeat. The brutality of the final line is reinforced by the poem's form. The lines diminish in the lead-up to the last line: in the final poem of the sequence, there are two tercets, followed by two couplets and concluding with that painful on-line stanza. We now see the mothers as victims. The so-called 'natural' processes of sex, birth and motherhood are turned upside down by social, economic and patriarchal forces.

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Ian Duhig, 'The Lammas Hireling'

The speaker of the poem is a farmer. He buys a cheap farm-hand at a fair. The new hireling has a positive influence on the farmer's cattle- he produces double the usual milk. One night, the farmer has a nightmare about his dead wife and hears his wife's voice coming from the hireling. He discovers the naked hireling caught in a fox-trap. The farmer thinks he had transigured into a hare and back again. The farmer then shoots the hireling, who turns back into a hare, before throwing him from a bridge. In the present, the farmer tells us his herd of cattle is no longer flourishing. We discover that the farmer has been telling his story in a church, as he seeks to confess his sin.

Commentary- This is perhaps the most unsettling and certainly the most ambigious poem in the anthology. It seems to take delight in wrong-footing us, leaving gaps, refusing to answer questions. This uncertainty finds its figurative expression in the poem's frequent shifts between light and dark; note, for example, 'The Lammas Hireling' without asking a number of questions. How did the hireling have such a seemingly magical effect on the cattle? Why does the farmer like compant that knows when to 'shut up'? What happened to the farmer's wife? Why does the famrmer tack her voice to the voice of the hireling? Was he jealous? Is he sexually attracted to hireling? Why doe she confess every hour? Part of the joy of reading this macabre poem is that we can play a game, trying to fill the gaps ourselves.

We certainly cannot trust the speaker he is an example of an unreliable narrator. The poem is a dramatic monologue, and he speaker is presented as having a very distinctive character. Phrases and reference suggest that the poem takes place at an indeterminate point in England's rural past, perhaps the 19th century: 'a heavy purse': 'elf-shot'; 'muckle sorrow'. We learn that the farmer is, finally at least, obsessed with money. He is pleased that the hireling was os cheap, and that the hireling helps him to make mor emoney from his cattle. The caesurae, the frequent short sentences and the stark phrasing of 'knew when to shut up' indicate that he is bullish and authoritative; they also suggest the farmer has difficulty with langauge and expression. At the end of the peo, he compulsively and obsessively seeks confession. bu he knows that he cannot be forgiven since he cannot reliably articulate his crime. Also, the poem's conclusion reveals that the farmer has changed substantially- his fixation wth money and wealth is now completely gone. Instead we see him melting his money to make bullets. To shoot what, we don't know. His mind appears broken. Perhaps he is trying to protect himself from a revengeful spirit of nature.

What about the hireling? The poem's title cetainly gives this charcter significant. to understand his signifance fully, we might need to consider him in the light of English folk traditions. The poems is very firmly located in this tradition, and in particular, shares similarities with the 15th and 16th century border ballands. Thes ballads often tell stories of murder and violence, as well as charcater whos magically transform into an animal. Also, tadtinal folk songs frequently recall a pre-Christian, pagan sensibility. The hireling, who appears to transfigure into a hare, is clearly placed in this folk tradition and is a Pan-like embodiment of nature and fetility. He certainly has an ease with nature: 'Yields doubled' under the hireling's stewardship, and 'cattle doted on him'. Perhaps the farmer is jealous of the hireling's ease. And, of course the hireling appears naked, suggesting a pagan fertility ritual or witchcraft.

Perhaps appropiatly, given its hsitorical setting, the poem adopts a traditional form. In fact, the shape of the poem is remarklably balanced and symmetrical: four regular sesets. This suggests a level of detail, control, recalling perhpas the authoritiative nature of the farmer. However, this symmetry is cut across by the jarring effects of enjambament. The apparently pleasant 'I grew fond of company' is undermined by the next line, 'That knew when to shit up'. Equally, 'Then one night' runs on to the following sestet and to the key, foreground word 'Disturbed': Duhing uses the pauses brought by the spacesto build an unsettling tension

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Andrew Motion, 'From the Journal of a Disappointed Man'

The speaker encounters a group of workment trying to drive a pile into a pier. The speaker comments on the size and scale of the pile, the tools and the men. He realises that them men have encountered a problem which they cannot fix. The wrkmen stare silently at the works before walking away. The speaker is left alone with h epile, which is lelft suspended in the air.

Commentary- This is another poem that makes interesting use of a persona. Although the poem is ostensibly about some workmen, its real focus is on the character of the speaker. With an apparent lack of self-awareness or reflection, he adopts a condescending tone twoars the workers, and seems keen to maintain the social distnace between them and himself.

The title is the first clue about the nature of the speaker. Its learned, fairly old-fashioned tone suggests works of fiction or diaries from the 18th century, and therefore indicates that he is well educated. Similarly, the form of the poem has deliberate assciations with the past - ordered, squential and regular quatrains, most of which are end-stopped. There is therefore a certain precision, an emerging fastidiousness to the speaker. The poem's diction also confirms the speaker as an educated intellectual as well as someone who is rather supercilious. it is polysyllabic and latinate. Is the speasker who seems a rather listless observer with nothing better to do than watch some bored workmen for over an hour using his complex vocabulary to assert a rather unfounded superiority?

The central contrast in the poem is between the speaker and the workmen. Their language, if they speak at all, is functional, monosylabic. they are described as photo

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Helen Dunmore, 'To My Nine-Year-Old Self'

The speaker imagines that she is able to meet herself as a child. The poem is addressed to the younger self. The speaker reflects upon the nine-year-old's fun and energetic life, and contrast this with the caution and care of the older speaker. The poem ends with the speaker leaving her younger self as she slowly peels a scab from her knee and puts it on her tongue.

Commentary- 'To My Nine Year Old Self' is at once a celebration of childhood and an anguished lamentation over its loss. Dunmore crafts the poem carefully to draw attention to the difference between youth and adulthood, and the erosions brought about by time alone.

Like many poems in the anthology, the title encapsulates the idea in the poem brilliantly. it, of course, immediately establishes who the poem is addressed to. Also,'myself' is literally split by the 'Nine-Year-Old'. The poem therefore immediately calls into question the idea that our identities throughout our lives, and that we have very little in common with our childhood self.

The poem begins with a short, four word sentence ostensibly a converstaional filler. This establishes a sense of a spoken voice (the poem is a dramatic monologue as the poet addresses her nine year old self. The phrase is also formal and oddly tentative and perhaps belong to the circumocutory world of adulthood, which would be alien to the child. But this conversational opening is also an entreaty. Sadly, the speaker is begging her younger self for forgiveness: for her decline and for all the thing she has lost or ruined from her childhood.

The caesura at the beginning of the poem cracks the line in the centre and intimates the distance between the speaker and the nine-year-old, espcially bearing in mind what immediatly follows: she instructs her younger self to not be shocked by her presence or be so keen to leave her. There is a briskness here, perhaps a note of irritation. This is not going to be a happy reunion. The impatience and energy of the child also emerges, and is confirmed in the subsequent lines in the stanza. Note the energetic parallelism which concludes the stanza, creating a succession of active verbs. She is fully inhabiting her own body, and her joy and energy are barely contained. The image of the girl jumping from a height also operates on a symbolic level. This is the fall from childhood to adulthood.

Dunmore contrasts the first two stanzas. The young liveliness of the ifrst stanza is contrasted with an adult caution in the second. This contrast is confirmed in the simply direct end-stopped first line of the sestet. This is followed by the words from the semantics field of ill health as she reflects on the fears and ailments which have afflicted her in adulthood. Even the shared body - one of the few things the two have in common - ultimately signifies the unbridgeable difference between her childhood and her adult self.

It is worth noting the actions and experiences assoicated with childhood in the poem. With the poem's frquent lists, childhood is presented as one long, vivid morning in the summer- the discovery of small animals, eating sweets, making dens, rope-swings. It is a kind of earthy paradise, like the innconcent Adam and Eve before the fall of experience and adulthood. The poem ends with a totemic image of childhood, as the younger self is left to peel and eat a scab from her knee.

This is a rich memorable image with a direc appeal to the senses. The child is self-absorbed, living immediately in the world and thankfully nonplussed by the worried- looking adult. But, like the rather sinister males mentioned, shadows lurk at the edges of this childhood. The poem ends with a rather awkward farewell and will soon be clouded over. After all, the speaker is efffectively a ghost not from the past but the future- a sombre warning of what the years to come will have in store.

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U.A. Fanthorpe, 'A Minor Role'

The speaker of the poem is seriously ill. She admits that being ill requires her to a play a role in order to maintain the illusion that everything is okay. Fanthrope also outline the mundane realities of illness; hospital waiting rooms; listening to consultants; taking medicines; pretending to other that she is 'getting on, getting better'. The poet lists what she does when she is at home. such as finding happy novels to read, tidying up and answering the phone. At the end of the poem the speaker affirms the value of life.

Commentary- At the centre of the poem is an exploration of how we respond to illness and deth. Up to the final line 'A Minor Role'. Fanthrope is suggesting that we repsond by desparatly maintaing an illusion - to ourselves and others - thata everything is fine. in effect, the speaker feels she is acting, performing the minor role of the title

This conceit is acting is established in the first stanza, and returned to again at the end. The idea of acting assumes an audience - one of the reasons why the speaker feels a need toplay a role is for other people. She knows she is being 'observed on stage'. The osnceit continures as the spekaer imagines paying the part of a servant in her own life, rather than a main protagonist. But even a small part like a servant can ruin the whole performance if the actor gets their lines worng, if they dont act convincingly enough.

The poem therefore contains this tension between the desire to maintain an illusion and the tsark relaity that the perfomance is hiding. it is worth searching the poem for indications of the mask sipping. The illusion is descibed metaphorically in the first stanza as a 'monsterous fabric'- something collassal, fearful perhaps. fanthorpe has also carefully crafted her line breaks in the poem:

"Cancel things, tidy things; pretend all's well,

Admit it's not"

The idea of a gap between illusion and reality is given a physical form here. the painful admission that everything is not fine at all is given added poignancy through the simple, brief poetic line 'Admit it's not'. The space surrounding the line suggests that the truth of the illness is silencing the speaker; there is nothing more to say. Line ending are also intending in this poem. What do you think is the impact of placing, for example, 'civility', 'misery' and 'yearnings' at the end of thier lines?

As part of its exploration of the impact of illness, the poem makes interesting use of lists. the second stanza consists almost entirely of a list, suggesting the dull montony of hosiptal visits, reinforced by the repeated -ing verbs. The metaphorical conjugation of 'misey' also results in an inevitable list. Towards the end, the items in the list are separated not by a comma or a semi-colon but by fll stops. The silences are becoming more final, more keenly felt. It is as through the speaker is trying to control or repress her real feelings about illness by resorting to ticking things off, and gaining some consolation from routines.

Fanthrope returns to the conceit of acting and performance in the final two stanzas of the poem, but her position has changed. She concluded by rejcting the performance: 'I jettison the spear' Powerfully, the speaker also rejects thoughts of suicide, or atleast giving in, in the defiant exclamation: 'No it wouldnt!" Being honest and direct wins out in the end as the poem makes a dramtic turn in the moving final stanza, which is a powerful single line of poetry.

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Vicki Feaver, 'The Gun'

The speaker's partner brings a shotgun into the house. It is initially described as resting ominously on a table. It is then used for target practice before being used to kill animals. The gun seems to have electrifying effects on the house as the speaker and her partner fest on the animals they have shot. the poem concludes with the speaker comparing the exciting feast to the arrival of a pagan King of Death.

Commentary- This poem positions itself against liberal attitudes towards guns and hunting, which perceives guns as dangerous and fearful instruments of violence and death. Feaver is in accordance with this liberal view in her initial response in the first and second stanzas of her poem; however, she concludes that a gun can have an electrifying impact- the thrill of the hunt and the pleasure of the subsequent feasting. A gun can bring an intensity, excitement and ultimately a celebration of life, despite life's fragility. the poem is therefore structured along these lines- the initial fear and disruption a gun brings, following by delightful relish.

The impact of the gun is established by Feaver's use of form in the opening couplet:

"Bringing a gun into a house

change it"

The first line holds in tension the contrast between a gun and a house. The line breaks suggest that the house has been disrupted by the gun. The line break creates a pause- a hesitancy- before the revelation of the second line. Our eye is therefore drawn towards the verb 'changes'; this is indeed a poem about change, the movement from fearful apprehension towards a primitive ecstasy.

The imagery in the second stanza continues the dynamic tension between the gun and the house. feaver has said that the poem is based on the experience of her husband bringing home a shotgun for the first time after moving to a very rural part of the country. The gun is already infused with a sexual symbolism as the husband lays it on the table, the phallus-like 'polished wood stock/jutting over the edge'. In the simile 'like something dead', Feaver is, at this point in the poem, contrasting the gun with 'grey' contrasts with the 'green-checked cloth' of the ostensibly domestic kitchen table. The gun and to violence develops significantly and an ethical line is crossed:

"Then a rabbit shot

clean through the head."

The poem becomes increasingly sensuous int he fourth stanza: her husband's hands 'reek of gun oil / and entrails' and he tramples the 'fur and feathers' of slaughtered animals into the house. The sensuousness reaches its culmination in the final line of the stanza in the remarkable simile: 'like when sex was fresh', suggesting the gun improves their sex life as it brings youthful vitality and virility. The following, single-line, end-stopped stanza confirms what has been hinted at throughout:

"A gun brings a house alive"

The speaker and her partner's ongoing relish is evinced in the syndetic pairs of -ing verbs in the final stanza as the feast is prepared: 'jointing/ and slicing, stirring and tasting". The poem's exploration of life and death is woven skillfully into the final, rather startling image. The pagan figure of the King of Death is imagined powerfully 'stalking / out of winder woods' to join in the feast. His mouth is 'sprouting golden crocuses'- flowers associated with the life of early spring. The presences of death ultimately make us cherish life because in death we recognise life's fragility.

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Leontia Flynn, 'The Furthest Distances I've Travelled'

The speaker remembers fondly travelling around the world. She enjoyed the freedom and the anonymity that travelling brought. The speaker then wounders why she no longer travels. She speculates that it might be due to an increased awareness of some of the dangers invloved. the poem then shifts the focus towards a 'routine eviction' brought about by the break-up of a relationship. The small items that are left over after the end of a relationship, such a Post-it notes and sports socks,a re like souvenirs. The 'futherest distances' the speaker has travelled -she realsies - are not her phsycial journeys around th world but her emotional movement from one partner to another

Commentary- The peom's form is particularly distinctive. In some ways, it is quite reugluar: quatrains and rhyming couplets. hwover, the line lengths differ markedly the third quatrian is a clear example of this. This perhaps suggests the restlessness and serach for freedom that characteristises the poem. The rhyme does, however, become full in the funal, more reflective quatrain as the speaker reaches her conclusion. The form could therefore be said to move from youthful exuberance to a more mature restraint.

The poem has a clear, two part structure, the first three quatrians describe the exhilaration of travelling and being young; note the confidence in "Yes. This is how/ to live'. The final five quatrians put the speaker, now older in a more domestic and mudance setting. The break between the two sections is underscored by the foregrounded discourse marker 'so to indiate the development of the topic. The diction of the peom therefore shifts from the adventurous and the usnusaul: 'Krakow', 'Zagreb', 'Siberian', 'Sherpa pass' and 'meridan', to the domestic: 'post office', 'giro', 'laudry', 'bottom drawers' and 'sports sock'

The penultimate quatrian contains a syndetic list of four 'souveniers' left over from 'holidaying' in people lives: 'alien pants, cinema stubs, the throwaway/ comment- on a Post-it- or a tiny stoway/ pressed flower.' The melancholy listing here suggests the apparently triaval and unembellished quality of these items. Given the context, howveer this list also suggests a sadness regarding the developing distances between people. Each ordinary item is probably imbued with a very perosnal memory of a past relationship.

The poem uses a range a figurative imagey which connects cohesively with its core idea of journeys: 'like a merdian', 'as over a tannoy', 'the Siberian white [of] airports'. Interestingly, metaphors of journey continue into the more domestic second section of the poem: 'souveniers' and 'stowaway' describe- wth added poignancy- the objects left behind after a relationship ends. Also, 'holidaying briefly in their lives' is a memorable final metaphore which conflates beautifully the two central concepts in the poem- journeys and relationshops. It is a sad note on which to end- acknowldeging the fraile, transient quality of our relationshipps with others.

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Daljit Nagra, 'Look We Have Coming to Dover!'

The poem describes the expeirence of illegal immigranrs as rhey aereve in Britian. After a journey 'stowed ' on a boat, they work in the ilegal labour market, 'unclocked by the national eye'. Their hipes are gain a passpot and become finacially secure legal British citizens.

Commentary- Nagra has said this poem is part of his interest in the English language as a mighrant language, of how it has been exported globally during Empire, and important bak through the movement and immigration of people. Despire its liguistic effervescence and playfulness, 'Look We Have Coming To Dover!' is a profoundly political poem with debabtes over national identity at its centre

Written in the voice of an immigrant or whom English is an additional language, the dismantlung and vibrant reclaiming of english language from its narrow, rather moribund, 'standard' grammar is playing out the wider impact of immigration on english national identity. The language sometimes used by the media to descibe migrants, such as 'ivade', 'teemed' and 'Sawrms' is reclaimed with new, rather joyful connotations. Nagra uses puns such as the tourists 'prow'd on the cruisers' he coins new verbs from nouns, such as 'unbladder' and 'phlegmed'. There are also a range of colliquia worrds and phrases with associations of working class communities such as 'cushy', 'hoick' and 'blamies'. combined, these language features represent immigrants- without any formal institiuatnal or economic power- carving their space in the English language making it their own. And, it seems, the English language is all the better for it.

The peom is not a simple expression of joy, howvever. The experiences of the migrants are shown to be very difficult indeed. They are 'Stowed' on the boat like an objectified piece of luggage, but also with suggestions of illegal stowaway. They feel the unpleasant 'lash' of the wind, while the settled citizens and tourists are 'lording the ministered waves'. This expression has echoes of 'lording it up'- asserting superiority- as well as a hint of government immigrantion bureaucracy in the 'misistered waves'. Once on land, their journey is no less diffiult . They struggle up cliffs in the rain. The hazards and physical challenges are reinforced by the aliteration of the 'm' sound in 'crumble of scummed/ cliffs, scramming on mulch'. They them work, 'grafting in / the black within shot of the moon's spotlight'. They live unnoticed on the edge of society doing the work nobody else wants to do.

But despite all of these difficulties, the speaker can imagine a future where they can settle legally and in properity. The wonderful coinage of using the noun 'passport' as a verb represents the central hope of the speaker and others like them. You can only be 'human'- atleast in the eyes of the state- if you are given citizenship. The speaker's hopes are, ultimatley, ordinary and identifiable; he wants money,a family, a car.

The peom's form, with the right margin getting narrorwer in each quintet might visually suggest the cliffs of Dover. In another way, the lines of increasing length suggest a momentum- the gathering momnetum of these ' Swarms' of immigrants relentlessly- definatly- reaching out into Britian.

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Adam Thrope, 'On Her Blindness'

The poem descibes how the speaker's mother- and her family- repsond to her blindness. She confesses that she finds it very difficult indeed. She pretends to ignore her illness, or she laughs it off, by visiting art exhibitiations or driving 'the old Lanchester'. Even the speaker, just before his mother dies, forgets her blindness as he describes beautiful autumn colurs. The poet concludes that her death makes her 'no more slightless, but now she can't /pretend.'

Commentary- This icnredicably moving portrait of Thrope's mother and her illness explore the fiction we maintain when faced with illness. What is it that makes us reluctant to look directly at illness and death? Why do we 'hide the fact that castrophic / handicaps are hell'? Why do we prefer the illusion to reality? Like Ford's 'Giuseppe', the poem's diction is stripped down, literal ad matter of fact:

"She turned to me, once,

in a Paris resturant, still not finding

The food on the plate with her fork,

or not so that it stayed on