Poppies

• When is the poem set?

  In present day, but reaches right back to the beginning of the Poppy Day tradition
• How many stanzas are there in Poppies?

  The first and last with six lines, the second with eleven and the third with twelve
• What does the use of Caesuras represent in the poem?

  The inner emotion of a narrator who is trying to remain calm and composed but is breaking with sadness inside
• How is imagery used in the second stanza?

  “Sellotape bandaged around my hand”

  This image carries echoes of battlefield imagery as well as cleaning cat hairs off the blazer. The contrast between the death in battle and the domestic happiness (the boy has been cuddling his cat) is powerful
• What does the door to the house symbolise?

  The door to the world
• What is the song-bird a metaphor for?

  The mother setting her child free
• What is the poem about?

  The nature of grief and the effects of war on others
• "Spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of yellow bias"


  Imagery of sun shining on his blazer, however the word "spasm" connotes violence
• "Reinforcement of scarf and gloves"


  Scarf and gloves are clothes to keep warm and safe, but the word reinforcement relates to military imagery throughout the poem
• "Tucks, darts, pleats"


  Tricolon of textile imagery, which also relates to war