Power and Conflict

English GCSE Literature

Paper 2 Poetry
Revision Guide

Get yourself ultra-ready for

your English Literature GCSE
exam with this helpful revision
guide.
Introduction

There are fifteen poems that you will have

studied in preparation for the poetry section of
your GCSE English Literature Paper 2 exam.
They are as follows:

The Prelude

Storm on the Island

Exposure

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Bayonet Charge

Remains

Poppies

War Photographer

Kamikaze

Ozymandias

London

My Last Duchess

The Émigrée

Checking Out Me History

Tissue

In Section A of your exam you will be given one of these poems which will be included in full in the
exam booklet.

However, you will also need to compare this given poem to one other in the collection based
around a theme that will be given to you. Here is an example:

Compare the ways the poets present ideas about anger in ‘Checking Out Me History’ and one other
poem from ‘Power and Conflict’

In order to do this you will need to think carefully about which poems fit into which particular
themes or ideas.
Revision Activity: Comparing Poems

Use your knowledge of the 15 anthology poems to tick off every theme you think each poem fits
into. This should help you see which poems would work best together in the exam.

4: Complete the table, ticking off all the relevant boxes for exam poem.

5: Which poems would be best to compare with Checking Out Me History on the theme of anger?
Make notes on how anger is shown in the two poems you choose and how it is similar or different to
Checking Out Me History.

6: Begin writing out an answer to this exam question and think about how you are showing your
comparisons in your answer.

Poem The The The The Loss or Memory Anger Guilt Fear Pride Identity Powerful Lack of Abuse
Power Power Effects Reality Absence Emotions Power of
of of of of Power
Humans Nature Conflict Conflict
The Prelude

Storm on
the Island

Exposure

The Charge
of the Light
Brigade

Bayonet
Charge

Remains

Poppies

War
Photographer

Kamikaze

Ozymandias

London

My Last
Duchess

The
Émigrée

Checking
Out Me
History

Tissue

Now that you’ve thought about how you will link the poems together, it would be a good idea to
recap every poem in detail. Over the next 15 pages you will find detailed information and analysis
on each poem, plus ways of helping you make notes on every poem in the collection.
 The Prelude

What happens in the poem?

The speaker is out walking in
the Lake District, an area of
England that is known for its
stunning natural beauty
(mountains, trees, plants, and
flowers – essentially, beautiful
countryside). When out
walking the speaker find a
boat and steals it.

During his journey he describes the natural world around him and seems full of admiration and
happiness, but then his mood change as he encounters an enormous, black mountain. This fills him
with fear and dread. The speaker then decides to head home, but his whole view of nature has
been fundamentally altered.

Context: William Wordsworth belonged to a group of poets known as the Romantics. The Romantics
were a group of writers, artists and musicians from the late 18th century into the early 19th century.

The Romantics had a very clear political philosophy and they wanted to stop the exploitation of the
poor by the wealthy. Rather than following the rules of society, the Romantics believed every
person should follow their own ideals.

They felt it very important that people only express their personal feelings. They also felt a sense of
responsibility to everyone in society: they felt it was their duty to use their work to change society.

What is this poem about? This can be quite a difficult poem for students to get their heads around;
this is because Wordsworth is being very metaphorical. The nature that surrounds him is a
representation of his state of mind: at first he is confident, self-assured and ultimately happy, but
later his mood completely alters. He becomes anxious, fearful and scared. It is about a man finding
his own identity and how he fits into the world around him.

Structure: The extract from The Prelude is written in blank verse, or unrhyming lines of iambic
pentameter (ten syllabies a line: 5 bars, 2 beats per bar). Iambic pentameter is the type of meter
that best mimics natural speech and presents a realistic representation of the speaker’s thoughts
and feelings.

At times the poem employs enjambment (where lines carry on into each other) to represent an
overflowing of emotions.

Language:

Go through the poem and using highlighters or coloured pens:

 Highlight all the parts of the poem which show a positivity to nature
 Highlight all the parts of the poem which show a negativity towards nature
 Highlight all the examples of the speaker personifying nature and explain why the speaker
does this.
 The speaker uses the pronoun ‘her’ on a number of occasions in this extract. Why does he do
this? Who might ‘her’ be? Which is it feminine?
 What do you notice about positivity and negativity within this poem? What does this tell you
about the speaker’s thoughts?
Storm on the Island

What happens in the poem? An isolated

community is preparing itself for the onslaught of a
severe storm. The speaker describes the
preparations, his thoughts and feelings about the
storm, the storm itself and how it affects him.

Context: Seamus Heaney grew up in rural Northern

Ireland, where his father was a farmer. Much of
Heaney’s poetry focuses on the countryside of his
childhood and his descriptions of nature can often
act as metaphors for human behaviour – in many
ways this is similar to Wordsworth’s ‘The Prelude’. Heaney spent much of his life living and teaching
in Northern Ireland and devoted himself to his writing.

What is this poem about? Like many of Heaney’s other poems, this one is packed with images of
nature. He describes the work the people of the community are doing to ensure they are protected
from the oncoming storm; the speaker also describes the power of the storm through very military-
like imagery and shows the growing strength of it, but ultimately this is a ‘huge nothing’ that they
fear- which is the wind.

Structure: The poem is presented in one stanza, which could be used to represent the isolation of
the island within the storm.

Both enjambment and caesuras are used at times throughout the poem to emphasise the
preparations of the people on the island and the ferocious power of the storm.

Moreover, the poem is presented in blank verse: 19 lines of unrhyming iambic pentameter. Again,
like ‘The Prelude’, iambic pentameter is used as it best represents the natural way of speaking.
When you couple this with the at times informal language of the speaker (“you know what I mean”)
it feels as if the speaker is addressing us directly.

Language:

 Highlight all the parts of the poem which shows the people on the island are well prepared
and are safe.
 Highlight all the parts of the poem which show the power of the storm.
 Find all the military images used within in the poem. What do you think is the conflict within
the poem? What do you think is the speaker’s attitude towards the storm? Why?
 At which points is the poem at its most tense? When is it least tense? Why do you think
Heaney constructed his poem like this?
 Exposure

What happens in this poem? A group of soldiers during

the First World War are waiting around in the trenches
before they are given orders to ‘go over the top’ and
fight. During this time, the speaker describes the
horrendous weather conditions that surround the
soldiers and threaten to kill them: they are shown to be
another type of enemy. Indeed, many soldiers did
perish because of the appalling conditions rather than
because of the fighting itself. The speaker mentions
about soldiers remembering being back home, but
ultimately ‘nothing happens’ in this poem.

Context: Wilfred Owen fought during the First World War and was killed just before the war ended.
He used his writing abilities to create deeply cynical and angry p oems about the War and the
reasons why it had happened. Owen’s works were very unusual at a time when most writing about
the war had been deeply patriotic.

What is this poem about? Owen was disgusted by the war and what he perceived as the utterly
futile or pointless nature of it. Thousands of young men seemed to be losing their lives in horrifying
ways for no reason. In this poem, Owen turns his focus to the weather and how it too becomes an
enemy to the soldiers.

Structure: This poem is divided up into eight stanzas of five lines each (using iambic hexameter –
lines of eight syllables), with each final line being indented and shorter than the rest. These shorter
lines help to provide a type of final idea to each stanza that emphasises the speaker’s thoughts
and feelings regarding the war. They are often framed as rhetorical questions, asking the reader
question the point of these men being exposed to these conditions.

Language:

 Highlight all the words which show existing in these conditions was incredibly tough.
 Find all the words which show the speaker is not the only one who is suffering in these
conditions.
 Find the examples of negative imagery being used in the poem. How is the weather
described? Why do you think the speaker chose to personify the weather in this way?
 Which lines in the poem do you think are the most tragic and desperate? How does Owen
use language in the poem to emphasise just how awful these conditions were?
The Charge of the Light Brigade

What happens in this poem? The speaker pleads with the

reader to picture the six hundred soldiers that formed the
Light Brigade to see them as brave and to be respected,
even though their deaths were tragic and because someone
‘blundered’ or made a huge mistake.

Context: This poem is based around an infamous conflict

during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crime an War, which
took place between 1853 and 1856. Britain was at the time fighting with Russia. A
miscommunication meant the soldiers in the Light Brigade were sent on the wrong mission, and
ultimately many of those men were killed. The soldiers were sent into a valley that was surrounded
by enemy soldiers with guns, whereas the Light Brigade only had swords on them.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson read about these events during 1854 and decided – in his position as Poet
Laureate – to write his piece to praise the soldiers despite the error that led to their deaths.

Tennyson was one of the most famous and celebrated poets of the Victorian era and therefore a
man of considerable influence.

What is this poem about? Although the soldiers were killed because of a stupid mistake, the speaker
tries to refocus the outcry that this generated and instead asks the reader to remember the soldiers’
bravery and nobility rather than anything else. He describes the actions of the soldiers in detail,
focusing on their bravery rather than their deaths.

Structure: The poem is divided up into six stanzas, with the first being 8 lines long, the next two have
9 lines, the fourth stanza is 12 lines long, the fifth 11 and the final stanza only 6 lines long. The
structure in this poem is driven by the refrain that appears at the end of each stanza and begins
‘Rode the six hundred’. This line changes slightly depending on the message of each stanza, but
the repetition of it focus the reader on the bravery of these men. They continue to ride on despite
the horrors they face.

The poem also features repetition heavily, suggesting an unrelenting rhythm that mimics the fast
pace of the soldiers and the horses as they rode into battle. This is further emphasised with the use
of rhyming triplets and couplets throughout the poem, including at times the use of half rhyme.

Language:

 Highlight all the words which show the speaker thinks the soldiers are brave.
 Highlight all the words which show the speaker thinks these soldiers should be respected.
 Look at the refrain at the end of each stanza. How does Tennyson use this in each stanza to
emphasise the message of his poem?
 Look at Tennyson’s use of imperative sentences within the poem. How do they help Tennyson
to influence his reader?
 Bayonet Charge

What happens in this poem? A soldier

during the First World War is sent ‘over
the top’ to charge across no man’s land
with a bayonet or knife fixed to the end
of his rifle. As he moves his thoughts and
feelings begin to change.

Context: Ted Hughes once served if the

RAF and studied Archaeology and
Anthropology at university, so he was
already thinking deeply about history
and mythology by the time he came to his writing.

What is this poem about? The speaker explains how a soldier begins the war full of patriotism and
pride in fighting for his country, but halfway across on his journey his feelings change and he gets a
sense of ‘bewilderment’ or realisation of where he is and what he is doing. The inclusion of the
yellow hare could be literal or it could be metaphorical, representing the cowardly side of the
soldier wanting to escape the situation he now finds himself in. By the end of the poem he is
desperate to escape. This poems contrasts particularly well with ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ in
terms of attitudes towards war and bravery.

Structure: The poem begins with the soldier already running – he finds himself running across the
battlefield, as if he is detached from what is happening.

The poem is broken up into three stanzas: the first explains the soldier’s initial actions and the
patriotism he had at the beginning: “The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye /
Sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest”.

The second stanza shows a significant change in tone with the soldier experiencing ‘bewilderment’
and a level of self-awareness: “In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations /
Was he the hand pointing that second?” It is a kind of existential experience for the soldier as he
begins to question exactly what he is doing.

The third stanza sees the soldier ‘awaken’ again and find a way to keep moving, to get out of “blue
crackling air”, but the yellow hare is included potentially as a form of metaphor to represent
cowardice.

The use of caesuras and enjambment creates lines of differing lines which could represent the
uneven running of the man through the mud.

Language:

 Find all the words in the first stanza which represent bravery and patriotism.
 Find all the words in the second stanza which question those ideas of bravery.
 Find all the words in the final stanza which suggest panic and fear.
 Find three language techniques being used in this poem. For each one, explain how the
technique gets across the writer’s ideas to the reader.
 Choose three examples of enjambment and caesuras and evaluate how they impact on
the reader.
Remains

What happens in this poem? A soldier recalls the memories he has of killing a man who was running
from a bank raid he was a part of. The soldier describes the memory of killing him in great detail
and explains his feelings about it afterwards. It is not something he can just forget about and the
images of the man keep going around and around his head – this
is something called ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’.

Context: Simon Armitage is a very famous British poet and wrote a

collection of poems called ‘The Not Dead’ based on the
experiences of soldiers in the Gulf, Bosnian and Malayan Wars –
those that happened after the Second World War.

Structure: The poem is made up of eight stanzas, with the first

seven made up of mostly unrhymed quatrains (four line stanzas).
However, the last stanza is only two lines long acting as a kind of summary of the soldier’s feelings
about the experience. Ultimately, he cannot get the image of the dead man out of his head.

The title has multiple meanings: It can mean ‘remains’ as in what remains of a body after a person
has been killed, it can refer to what ‘remains’ in the soldier’s head after the event and finally what
remains of the soldier now that his life has been turned upside down.

The first person perspective provides a kind of monologue and the use of no particular rhyme
scheme and examples of enjambment make the poem sound like natural speech, as if the speaker
is talking directly to us.

Language:

 Find all the words which describe the killing of the man.
 Find all the words which show the soldier keeps remembering the event.
 Find all the words which show he cannot forget about what has happened.
 Find three language techniques being used in this poem. For each one, explain how the
technique gets across the writer’s ideas to the reader.
 How do the perspectives of the other soldiers mentioned in the poem differ to those of the
speaker? What does this tell us about war?
 Poppies

What happens in this poem? A mother describes her thoughts and feelings as her son is leaving
home to join the army.

Context: Jane Weir is of English and Italian heritage, and grew up in both Manchester and Italy. As
an adult she spent time living in Belfast but now resides in England. The poem ‘Poppies’ was
commissioned as part of a collection of modern war poetry by Carol Ann Duffy in 2009.

What is this poem about? As a mother prepares to say goodbye to her son who is leaving to go to
war, she remembers the experiences she had with her son when he was a child, how she feels now
that he is going and her fears of what will happen in the future. Like some of the other poems in the
‘Power and Conflict’ collection, Weir’s Poppies deals with the feelings of absence and loss.

Structure: The poem has four clear stanzas, the

opening and closing stanzas with six lines, the second
with 11 and the third 12.

The heavy use of caesuras suggests a person unsure

about themselves and how they feel. Whilst the
mother gives the outward appearance of confidence
and certainty to her son, inside we can see through
her thoughts that she is struggling to come to terms
with the loss of her son as he leaves.

As the poem moves along we see it is moving across

time as well: “Three days before”, “Before you left”,
“After you’d gone”, “later” and “this is where it led me”. Throughout the poem the mother returns to
her past with her child as she remembers their experiences together.

The memorial in the final stanza acts as a visual metaphor for the past as the speaker stands in the
present looking to the future. Like some of the other poems in the ‘Power and Conflict’ collection,
Poppies focuses on the idea of time and the power it has.

Language:
Jane Weir on Poppies:
Highlight all the words in the poem that show the role of a mum or mother.
"I wanted to write a poem
from the point of view of a For each word or phrase highlighted, explain how the speaker is feeling.
mother and her
relationship with her son, a Using the quote on the left hand side and your own interpretation of the
child who was loved
poem, what message was Weir trying to send to her readers? Why?
cherished and protected...
and it had led to this....
heightened and absolute
fear that parents
experience in letting their
children go, the anxiety and
ultimately the pain of loss...
I hoped to somehow
channel all this, convey it
into something concise and
contemporary, but also
historically classic, in terms
of universal experience."
War Photographer

What happens in this poem? This poem focuses on the experiences of someone who goes to war
zones to take pictures for national newspapers back in the UK. In his darkroom (where he develops
his photos) at the start of the poem, he develops the pictures he’s taken. Being back at home in the
UK presents a very different world to the ones he has visited in the midst of war. Like in ‘Remains’,
the photographer remembers the experiences he went through and the ‘ghosts’ that are in his
thoughts.

Context: Carol Ann Duffy was friends with a war

photographer herself and was intrigued by the idea of
people who go to war zones to record what is
happening there without being able to get directly
involved themselves.

What is this poem about? Duffy uses her poem to not only
explain the difficult role of being a war photographer,
but to ask the reader to look at themselves and ask why
they have become desensitised to images of war. It also
seems like the war photographer is finding it increasingly
difficult to find comfort in his own world but also forget about the events he has seen – he is
emotionally and mentally torn.

Structure: The poem is divided up into four regular six line stanzas and each one ends with a
rhyming couplet. Unlike some of the other poems in the ‘Power and Conflict’ collection, War
Photographer is rigidly structured. Could this mirror the photographer’s determination to find some
sort of order in the chaos he finds himself in? He does put the ‘spools of suffering’ into ‘ordered rows’
after all. Moreover, a war photographer must be detached and distant from his work in order to do
his job. The regular structure to the poem seems to reflect this.

The final lines “From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where / he earns his living and they do
not care” suggest the people he takes photos for do not care about the people he takes photos of,
and the war photographer is off to his next assignment to earn his living and feels ‘impassive’ or
without care about having to do it once more.

Language:

Highlight all the words which show the war photographer is trying to detach himself from the
experiences he has been through.

Highlight all the words which show the true horrors of war.

Find the quotes which show the people back at home do not really care about the war photos
they see. How does Duffy use language to emphasise this lack of feeling towards others?

How does Duffy use language to make clear to the reader how the war photographer is struggling
to exist within the two worlds that he finds himself trapped between? How is this similar or different to
one of the other poems in the collection?
Kamikaze

What happens in this poem? A kamikaze pilot sets off on his mission but halfway on his journey he
changes his mind. Kamikaze pilots were trained to go on suicide missions, or to crash their planes
into enemy boats. The pilot’s daughter tries to explain to the reader why she thinks he turned back:
because he loved the beauty of nature around him and because he remembered the wonderful
days of his childhood. It was a great honour to become a kamikaze pilot in Japanese culture at the
time and to not complete your mission would be viewed as cowardice and a great dishonour to
your family. The pilot’s wife and family shun and isolate and slowly his children learn to do so too.

Context: Kamikaze pilots were used more and more during the final stages of the Second World
War as the Japanese war leaders become increasingly desperate. It was seen in Japanese society
as a great honour to die for your country and Kamikaze pilots were highly respected – but to refuse
to complete your mission left you isolated and ostracised, as we see in this poem.

What is this poem about? Beatrice Garland uses this poem to question the attitudes surrounding
Kamikaze pilots and how the pilot is treated when he returns. The way the fish are described in the
sea emphasises how beautiful they were to the father, and the way speaker talks of her father
suggests she can understand why he did what he did.

Structure: The poem is set out in seven, six-line stanzas

and although there isn’t a regular rhyming pattern to
the piece, most lines have a similar length and number
of syllables to them, providing a calmness, neutrality
and regularity to the poem. The speaker tells the reader
the story, and the reader can then make up their own
minds about the events that have taken place.

There is a shift in perspective halfway through the

poem. Initially, the poem is told in third person (“her
father, “she thought”), but this changes to first person
(“my mother never spoke again”) which changes our understanding of the poem and of the pilot.
Finally, we are told that the speaker’s mother thinks the father probably felt about would have
been the better way to die. We are provided with three perspectives throughout the poem and it is
up to the reader to interpret the events.

Language:

 Find three quotes which show the speaker understands why her father did what he did.
 Find all the quotes which show the family shunned the pilot.
 How do you interpret the poem? Do you think the pilot was right to turn back? Why? Why
not? Use quotes from the poem to support your interpretation.
 Choose three language techniques the writer has included in her poem. How does each
one influence the reader in terms of their interpretation of the pilot’s actions?
Ozymandias

What happens in this poem? The speaker meets a traveller who explains to him about a broken
statue he saw standing in the middle of a desert. We find out the statue was of a former pharaoh or
king known as Ozymandias. The statue’s base contains an inscription which shows that Ozymandias
is boasting of his immense power, but around the statue is nothing but wasteland.

Context: Written by English poet Percy

Bysshe Shelley in 1818, it focuses in on
Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II who ruled
from 1279 BCE to 1213 BCE (66 years!)
Ozymandias was another name for
Ramesses. Ramesses II had hundreds of
statues and temples built in his name,
which would have used slave labour to
build them.

Shelley was born into a wealthy family

and was set to inherit his father’s fortune.
However, Shelley began writing on
controversial topics – including atheism
(not believing in God) – which meant his father disowned him.

What is this poem about? Ozymandias was once the ruler of a great civilisation, but now virtually
nothing exists of the city he presided over. It can be argued that the poem ‘Ozymandias’ is not just
about Ramesses but about the abuse of power generally and how those with power can perceive
themselves to be invincible or undefeatable.

Structure:

How does the rhyme of ‘stand’ and ‘sand’ give the image extra power?

Why does Shelley rhyme ‘decay’ and ‘away’ and ‘despair’ and ‘bare’ at the end of the poem?

Most of the poem is written as a quote from the traveller. Why does Shelley choose to do this?

Language:

Highlight all the negative ideas within the poem. Choose three and explain what they mean.

Highlight in one colour the description of the statue and in another the description of Ozymandias
as a person. What do you notice about the two descriptions?

Label all the language techniques you can find being used in the poem. How do they help to
emphasise the meaning or message of the poem?
London

What happens in this poem? The speaker describes a walk around the city of London during the 18th
century. Everywhere he looks the speaker sees poverty, misery and despair. No one escapes it,
except perhaps those who live behind the palace walls and the Church – who seem to do nothing
about the inequality that surrounds them.

Context: Blake lived at time of huge change in

Europe: France had gone through a revolution
where the ordinary people had risen up against the
wealthy ruling classes. It inspired Blake to look to his
own country and see the suffering all around him.

Blake lost faith in his religion and so began to

question the role of Christianity and the Church in
society, something which he alludes to in the poem
‘London’.

England itself was going through the Industrial

Revolution which itself was bringing enormous
changes to life for the people of the country.

What is this poem about? Blake wanted to bring change to his own country and hated seeing the
suffering around him. In his poem he uses imagery to emphasise just how awful life is for most
people in the city and how those with power simply ignore what is happening around them.

Structure: The structure is simple and regular – the poem is presented in four stanzas of four lines
(quatrains) with a regular ABAB rhyme scheme. This allows Blake to create regular snapshots of all
the misery taking place in London, but also may imply that such suffering is firmly established and
normalised in 18th century London.

Language:

Find three powerful images of the suffering of ordinary people in London.

Find three powerful images of the people with power doing nothing to help those suffering.

Why does Blake speak of ‘charter’d street’ and ‘charter’d Thames’? ‘Charter’d’ means privately
owned. What does it suggest about life in 18th century London?

Why does Blake use the oxymoron ‘marriage hearse’ at the end of the poem? What does it suggest
about the futures of the poor in London?
My Last Duchess

What happens in this poem? The poem is a type of dramatic monologue and ‘Ferrera’ is the
character saying it. It is believed Ferrera is based on Alfonso II d'Este, the fifth Duke of Ferrara (1533–
1598), who, aged 25, married Lucrezia di Cosimo de' Medici, the 14-year-old daughter of Cosimo I
de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Eleonora di Toledo.

The Duke is presenting a painting of his ex-wife to a visitor to his home. The Duke explains that he
was angered by his wife’s behaviour towards him and other people: she treated him like anyone
else and she seemed to enjoy simple gifts from others just as much as any he gave her. It is hinted at
in the poem that the Duke may have had the Duchess
murdered. By the end of the poem it is made clear he
is moving on to a potential new wife. The old Duchess
was simply his ‘last’ Duchess.

Context: Robert Browning was a 19th century poem

and born into a wealthy family. He later moved to Italy
and married his wife Elizabeth Barrett – one reason that
they moved was to escape her over-protective father.
These experiences meant Browning knew all too well
about over-controlling patriarchs or leading male
family members.

What is this poem about? The poem is critical of the

pride and vanity of the Duke, whose jealously and
suspicious nature seems him lose his wife – potentially
because he had her murdered. He is presented as a
sinister and unlikeable character who judges things by
its appearance rather than having any substance.

Structure: The poem is presented in lines of iambic

pentameter (five bars of two beats = 10 syllables per
line) and in rhyming couplets. However, although rhyming couplets would normally help make a
poem easy to remember, the Duke employs lots of enjambment and caesuras throughout the
poem, with caesuras showing he is being very controlling in what he says, but enjambment showing
he is very keen to show off his wealth and power to his visitor, or presents the anger and jealously he
feels about his wife’s behaviour.

Like some of the other poems in the ‘Power and Conflict’ collection, this poem is presented as a
dramatic monologue meaning we only ever hear from one perspective; in this case it is only the
Duke’s. He is controlling the conversation in this poem and it symbolises his over-protective nature.

Language:

Highlight all the words that suggest the Duke is a proud man.

Circle all the parts of the poem that suggest the Duke was suspicious of his wife.

What is the Duke proud of? What might this suggest to us about him as a character?

In what ways does Browning portray the Duke? What message might the writer be presenting to his
reader?

Although not told directly, the reader can begin to understand how the Duke and Duchess’
relationship deteriorated. How do we see this?
The Émigrée

What happens in this poem? The speaker is a young

girl who was forced to leave her home country, but
rather than be negative about she clings on to the
positive memories of her home and her childhood.
There is a lot of war and military imagery used in this
poem, so we assume she has left home because of
war. She explains she knows what her home is like
now, but she refuses to accept that as a reality,
rather imagining the world she remembered
instead.

Context: Rumens bases much of her poetry on ideas of people emigrating from places like Russia or
the Middle East to move elsewhere and escape corruption or tyranny (the abuse of power), or
where places have been widely affected by war, such as Syria.

Structure: The poem is divided into three stanzas, with the first two being eight lines long and the
final stanzas nine lines long. This extra line may represent the determination of the speaker not to let
go of the positive image of her city.

There is no rhyme pattern used in ‘The Emigrée’ but most lines use five stresses – although this is not
always the case. This may reflect the chaos and confusion that surrounds war zones and fleeing the
place you once called home.

Language:

Use four colours:

 Find all the words to do with lightness. Highlight them.

 Find all the words to do with darkness. Highlight them.

 Find all the words to do with a positive city, highlight them.

 Find all the words to do with a negative city, highlight them.

 Is the positive city linked to light or darkness?

 Why might this be? What is the writer trying to tell us?

 Why is there also a negative city? Why is this linked to darkness?

Checking Out Me History

What happens in this poem? The speaker of the poem is angry at the way he has been taught only
nursery rhymes and European history at school. He feels that he has to carve out his own identity
through his own efforts rather than relying on schools to tell him about his own past. He goes
through a number of examples of Eurocentric historical figures
like Napoleon and Lord Nelson, before switching hi s focus to
historical figures he sees more relevant to his own background,
such as Mary Seacole and Nanny de Maroon.

Context: John Agard was born in Guyana in 1949 and moved

to Britain in 1977. Identity and ethnicity are therefore very
important in many of his poems.

Creole is a mixture of different languages and is a type of

dialect, so words that are unique to it and aren’t usually found
in English. John Agard writes in Creole in some parts of his poem
‘Checking Out Me History’ and in more formal English in others.

Structure:

There are two clear structures in this poem: the Creole-

influenced sections which focus on European historical figures,
written mostly in rhyming couplets, triplets or quatrains. End rhyme is also used regularly in these
sections. They all work together to create a bouncy, comical sound to these descriptions.

The other type of structure is when the speaker focuses on three black historical figures: Toussaint
L'Overture, Nanny de Maroon and Mary Seacole. Here there is a more irregular rhyme scheme and
the lines are much shorter. These help to produce a more serious, sombre tone that perhaps imply
respect.

Language:

Highlight the parts written in Creole in one colour and in another the parts written in more formal
English.

For which parts has Agard used Creole and for which has he used formal? Why does he do this?

How does Agard’s use of language in these stanzas help to mirror Agard’s message in the poem?
Tissue

What happens in this poem? This poem is not narrative

but rather sets out to explain the power of tissue paper
as an extended metaphor for life. The speaker explains
how paper has been important to us throughout our
history, including through recording our history and its
power in religious texts like the Quran. Moreover, the
speaker talks of the power of paper through receipts,
maps and architectural drawings. Paper is incredibly
important to us, but the speaker also makes clear how
fragile it can be as well.

The speaker goes on to suggest that human life is more significant than paper and it will go on to
outlive the records we make. However, the speaker might also suggest that human life is fragile like
paper and what we build and create cannot always last. It is a poem that is open to interpretation.

Context: Imtiaz Dharker is a poet of Pakistani origins but was raised in Glasgow in Scotland. Many of
her poems focus on topics such as the power and role of religion, the issue of terrorism and finding
your identity. Much of her work is metaphorical and symbolic.

Structure: The poem is broken up into mostly unrhymed and irregular quatrains (lines of four). This
‘messy’ layout can reflect the way life is both irregular and often flimsy. Moreover, the use of
enjambment across the poem suggests a lack of control by human beings over their own lives and
reflects the flowing and delicate nature of both humanity and paper – there are many similarities
between the two.

Every stanza is of four lines, except one: the last stanza, which has only one line to it. This therefore
brings attention to the last stanza: “turned into your skin”.

Language:

Find all the quotes which use the symbol or metaphor of light. Why do you think the speaker uses
this metaphor to describe paper?

Find all the quotes which show paper is powerful. Explain in what ways does the speaker show
paper to have power.

Find all the quotes which show paper and humanity are similar. In your own words, evaluate what
the poem says about the similarities between paper and humanity.