English lit - POETRY

• Prelude

  • Themes: power of nature, fragility of human power
  • Language: repetition, personification, juxtaposition
  • Structure: one long stanza – rambling, incoherent tone – makes reader feel breathless (enjambment) – nature is overwhelming
• Prelude

  • "Huge peak, black and huge"
  • "Strode after me, with trembling oars I turned"
  • "huge and mighty forms, that do not live like living men"
  • “was nothing but the stars and the grey sky”
• Prelude

  Related to: exposure, ozymandias, storm on the island, kamikaze
• Checking out me history

  • Themes: oppression (colonial), resistance, identity
  • Language: creole language, repetition
• Checking out me history

  • "dem tell me/ dem tell me"
  • "bandage up me eye with me own identity"
  • "I carving out me own identity"
  • "dem tell me bout de dish ran away with de spoon, but dem never tell me bout Nanny de maroon"
• Checking out me history

  Related to: London, the emigree, kamikaze
• Ozymandias

  • Themes: power is finite, power of nature, human ignorance
  • Language: irony, secondary account
  • Structure: second hand account – creates distance- further showing how insignificant his power is
• Ozymandias

  • "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings"
  • "nothing beside remains."
  • "I met a traveller from an antique land"
  • "round the decay of that colossal wreck"
• Ozymandias

  Related to: prelude, my last duchess, tissue
• Kamikaze

  • Themes: society, propaganda, identity, conflict
  • Language: natural imagery
• Kamikaze


  • "bunting on a green-blue translucent sea"
  • "her father embarked at sunrise"
  • "full of powerful incantations" (father)
  • "my mother never spoke again, and the neighbours too"
  • "as though he no longer existed"
  • ”remembered how he and his brothers, waiting on the shore”
• Kamikaze


  Related to: checking out my history, exposure, prelude
• War Photographer

  • Themes: guilt, reality of war, futility
  • Structure: cyclical structure, tight structure (ABBCDD rhyme, 4 stanzas, 6 lines)
• War Photographer

  • "Spools of suffering set out in ordered rows"
  • "Rural england. Home again to ordinary pain"
  • "the readers eyeballs prick with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers"
• War Photographer

  Related to: remains, exposure
• Remains

  • Themes: PTSD, guilt, effects of war
  • Language: colloquial tone, repetition, graphic imagery
• Remains

  • "(sleep, and he's) probably armed, possibly not"
  • "Sort of inside out, pain itself the image of agony"
  • "end of story, except not really, his blood-shadow stays on the street"
  • "and the drink and drugs wont flush him out"
• Remains

  Related to: war photographer, exposure, bayonet charge, poppies, the charge of the light brigade
• Exposure

  • Themes: power of nature, reality of war, monotony of war, futility
  • Language: sibilance, personification, rhetorical questions
  • Structure: cyclical structure, 1st person account
• Exposure

  • "Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us"
  • "but nothing happens" x3
  • "sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence, less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow"
  • "what are we doing here"
• Exposure

  Related to: kamikaze, prelude, war photographer, charge of the light brigade, storm on the island
• Poems relating to London

  • Checking out me history
  • my last duchess
• Poems relating to My last duchess

  • Ozymandias
  • london
• Poems relating to The charge of the light brigade

  • Exposure
  • remains
• Poems relating to storm on the island

  • Prelude
  • exposure
• Poems relating to Bayonet charge

  • Remains
  • exposure
• Poems relating to poppies

  • Remains
• Poems relating to tissue

  • Ozymandias
• Poems relating to the emigree

  • Checking out me history
• Emigree quotes

  ‘ i have no passport, theres no way back at all’

  ‘They mutter death and my shadow falls as evidence of sunlight’

  ‘they accuse me of being dark in their free city’

  ‘ my memory of it is sunlight clear’

  ‘I am branded by am impression of sunlight’

  ‘tastes of sunlight’