Mametz Wood

• "the wasted young"

  • decaying bodies wasting away - lives lost too soon - wasted potential
  • creates profound image that evokes a lot of emotions form the reader
  • emphasis of 'youth' reminds reader hoe the soldiers' lives were stolen
• "nesting machine guns."

  • metaphor makes guns sound predatory through the connotations of birds from 'nesting'
  • metaphor displays soldiers as victims
  • full stop creates sense of finality
  • 'nesting' implies new life- suggest guns are part of nature
• "skeletons paused mid-dance macabre"

  • humerous imagery - dancing skeletons - dark humour
  • reminds the reader that these soldiers were once alive human beings similarly to how they were led into this essentially suicide mission by superiors
  • they haven't fully achieved rest yet
  • haven't been able to go home yet - stuck in foreign land - medieval idea of being lead into graves by death
• context

  • Mametz Wood was one of the bloodiest battles of World War One. As part of the first Battle of the Somme in 1916, soldiers of the Welsh division were ordered to take Mametz Wood, the largest area of trees on the battlefield - welsh lost 4000 soldiers in 5 days
  • The poet Owen Sheers grew up in Wales and wrote the poem in 2005 as he felt their bravery and sacrifice was never really acknowledged
• structure

  • The poem’s structure is in regular three-line stanzas almost reflecting the neat linear pattern of a ploughed field. However, at times the length of the lines change, with longer lines breaking up the neat form. This disrupted pattern could reflect the ‘chits of bone’ rising out of the ground and disrupting our attempts to forget the past.
  • The first part of the poem focuses on the land itself before the focus shifts to the bones and dead soldiers in the final stanzas. The concluding stanza brings all the elements together