Context

• Before You Were Mine - Context


  • Duffy has great admiration for her mother
  • Poem explores 1950s conventions of women to stay at home, not work and raise their children
• Climbing My Grandfather - Context


  Waterhouse had a keen interest in the environment
• Eden Rock - context


  • Causley's father died when Causley was 7
  • Causley's mother died before the poem was released
• Follower - context


  • Heaney grew up in a farming community wherein there would be expectations of him becoming a farmer himself
• When We Two Parted - Context


  • Would be socially unacceptable to mention sex explicitly
  • Byron had a reputation of being scandalous
• Love's Philosophy - Context


  • Romantic poet
  • Atheist (controversial)
• Porphyria's Lover - Context


  • Porphyria is a disease - mental disturbances
  • Writing is especially scandalous and shocking as scandals were constantly published in the newspapers
• Sonnet 29 - 'I think of thee!' - Context

  • From the collection "Sonnets from the Portuguese" which were poems written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning for Robert Browning. She didn't show him them until after their marriage
  • Barrett Browning was cut off from her family for marrying Robert Browning
  • Countering the expectations for women not to express strong emotions
• Neutral Tones - Context


  • Hardy had a poor love life with two unhappy marriages. Reflected in depressing tone of the poem
• Letters From Yorkshire - Context


  • Effect of distance on a relationship
• The Farmer's Bride - Context


  • Mew, her sister and her brother were all institutionalised - reflected in the poem with a sense of wasted life
  • Challenges the idea that a woman's identity is tied to her husband
• Walking Away - Context


  • Believed to be written about Day-Lewis' son Sean who was sent to boarding school at 7
  • Day-Lewis was brought up by his father as his mother died when he was young - poem challenges the stereotype that mothers must be the most present in a child's upbringing
• Mother, any distance - Context


  • Talks about the moment in any parent-child relationship wherein a child must be allowed to leave and grow up
• Winter Swans - Context


  • Sheers' work tends to focus on exploring identity and relationships and how people live together in society
• Singh Song! - Context


  • Alludes to belonging and British vs Indian identity crisis
  • Focusses on a challenge that many have to face of the conflict between love and other commitments such as work