quotes

• “For years you kept your accent

  in a box beneath the bed,

  the lock rusted shut by hours of elocution” 

  • The lines introduce a speaker’s direct address to a listener:
  • The speaker suggests, symbolically, that their accent has been hidden by hours of speech training (“elocution”)
• “how now brown cow

  the teacher’s ruler across your legs.”

  • The poem uses a phrase connected with elocution: “how now brown cow”
  • The speaker is punished if they get it wrong and pronounce the vowels in an accent different to the “Queen’s English” or received pronunciation
• “We heard it escape sometimes,

  a guttural uh on the phone to your sister,

  saft or blart to a taxi driver

  unpacking your bags from his boot.

  I loved its thick drawl, g’s that rang.”

  • The narrator refers to the listener’s native accent, which “escapes” at times
  • The narrator lists occasions when they have heard the hint of the listener’s native pronunciation of words
  • They add that they “loved” the sound of it (stressed by the past-tense verb)
• “Clearing your house, the only thing

  I wanted was that box, jemmied open

  to let years of lost words spill out –”

  • The speaker hints at the listener’s absence while describing clearing the house
  • They refer to a “box”, which held the listener’s hidden accent:
  • This is confirmed when the narrator mentions “lost words” 
  • It is clear the speaker wishes the listener had been more open about their heritage:
  • They want to break open the box (“jemmied”) and let the “words spill out” 
• “bibble, fittle, tay, wum,

  vowels ferrous as nails, consonants

  you could lick the coal from.”

  • The speaker mentions words and sounds that make up the Black Country accent
  • The lines mention iron (“ferrous”) and “coal”, referring to industry commonly associated with the region
• “I wanted to swallow them all: the pits,

  railways, factories thunking and clanging

  the night shift, the red brick

  back-to-back you were born in.”

  • The speaker uses metaphor to describe the native accent:
  • The symbolic nature of “swallow” refers to the richness of the sounds
  • The poet lists aspects of colour and sound that refer to the urban nature of the region 
• “I wanted to forge your voice

  in my mouth, a blacksmith’s furnace;

  shout it from the roofs,”

  • The speaker repeats a desire for a closer connection with the listener’s heritage
  • Here, they suggest they wanted to sound the same and use their accent proudly 
• “send your words, like pigeons,

  fluttering for home.”

  • The poem ends with a natural image: a homing pigeon
  • The title of the poem connects with the final lines:
  • “Homing” refers to the idea that the listener’s words are sent back home, as if they were pigeons containing messages