A Wider View by Seni Seneviratne

• Structure


  • 5 stanzas
  • 4 quintains, 1 quatrain
  • No rhyme scheme or rhythm
• Free verse


  • unpredictability
  • uncontrollable
  • where you're born isn't up to you
• backyard of his back-to-back


  • plosives
  • hard life
  • suggests poverty
  • he doesn't have a real back garden, just a backyard
• searched for spaces / in the smoke-filled sky

  • Sibilance
  • soft sound
  • slower pace
  • wishful thinking
  • moment of reflection
  • slower pace but no pause
  • suggeststs monotony
  • Looking for something else in life
• stack his dreams

  • Chimney stacks
  • his dreams will ever amount to anything more than the chimneys he sees in the sky
• keep them / and his newborn safe from harm


  • fear
  • danger
  • newborn is vulnerable
  • things he holds dear
• eighteen sixty-nine


  Victorian times
• combing flax beneath / the conicals of light


  • hard work
  • monotony, boredom
  • can't blame him for wanting to see a view on his way home
  • windows
  • probably not much natural light in the mill
• he craved the comfort

  • "c" repitition
  • could represent the sound of machinery
• a wider view


  • sees a bigger picture of the world
  • he sees more to life than what he has
  • he knows that there's more but he's tied down by his life
  • the "wider view" are probably the moors near Leeds
  • escapism
  • sense of peace as he looks at the land around him
  • dreaming
• Tower Works... Harding's chimney

  • almost a love letter to Leeds
  • beautifying these places
• drew his sights beyond the limits of his working life


  • he knows there could be more to life than what he has access to
• drowned the din of engines


  • noisy working life
  • got into his head
• imagined peals of ringing bells


  • church bells?
  • imagines a more rural time
• my footsteps echo in the sodium gloom


  • street lights used to be sodium
  • much dimmer than modern LEDs
• red-brick vaults / begin to moan

  • personification
• time, collapsing in the River Aire


  • same location, different time
  • connection to the great-great-grandad across time
• meet him on the Wharf


  • reference to specific places
  • clear to those who know the place
  • still understandable if you don't know them
  • industrial
  • she also has a wider view
  • water imagery
  • flowing like time
  • connection between people and the places that they grew up in
• timeless in the flux of time


  in the speaker's mind
• anchored / only by the axis of our gaze


  • held down by the same things
  • both living hard lives
  • connection through time
  • times change but some things don't
  • standing in the same places looking at the same buildings
  • both of them shaped by their environment
• the curve of past and future generations / arcs between us


  • her and her great-great-grandfather are connected
  • she's walking the same streets and seeing the same sights as her great-great-grandfather
  • change yet no change
  • connection through family, time and location
• Techniques


  • Hard sounds
  • One quatrain
  • Cesura
  • Enjambment
• Hard sounds


  • suggests hard life
  • little luxury
  • contrast with the soft sound of the wishful thinking
  • echoes of sound throughout the poem like echoes of time
• One quatrain


  • four lines rather than five
  • pivotal change in the poem
• Cesura


  • mostly the 4th and 5th stanzad
  • slows them down
  • slightly less monotonous
• Enjambment


  • speeds up the first three stanzas
  • flows quickly
  • relentless pace
  • monotony
  • weary
  • work and life never stop