Context

• Ozymandias

  • Shelley was inspired to write the poem when he heard the British Museum had secured a large fragment of the statue of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II.
  • Shelley most likely wrote it as a warning to people and governments that get too powerful and think they are invincible. He hated royalty.
  • One of the Romantics - he believed nature would always be more powerful than mankind.
• Ozymandias

  • Fascinated as a poet by the fact it’s our words that will survive us.
  • In 1817, a statue from Ancient Egypt was being transported to London
  • The poem is a variant of a Petrarchan sonnet (possibly to describe the pharaoh’s egotistical love for himself)
  • About man not being humble and accepting the limitations of time and nature
• The Manhunt

  • Based on soldier who’s been traumatised by war - he suffers from PTSD, was shot, and suffered from major internal injuries
  • Based on personal experience and real live - poem is biographical
  • Written for a TV documentary raising awareness for PTSD
• The Soldier

  • Written before the war started, and Brooke had never been to war - he ironically died by a mosquito bite before he could go to war
  • Originally titled ‘The Recruit’
  • Brooke thought fighting for England was noble, honerous, and glourious
• As Imperceptibly as Grief

  • The poem’s rhythm mirrors the pattern of everyday speech, making it sound like the narrator’s honest thoughts. The poet uses long dashes rather than conventional punctuation - these create long pauses and enhances the poem’s slow, reflective mood
  • Dickinson was an American poet who was born in 1830. In her adult years, she lived in almost complete isolation but wrote many letters and poems. Her poems often discuss death and nature
  • The end of summer represents the end of grief - it happens so subtly that it creates another sense of loss
• London

  • Modernisation is the process of change by replacing old methods or things with newer ones.
  • There was lots of drunkenness, poverty, starvation, infanticide, death, misery and suffering in London in the 18th Century
  • London was expanding very rapidly, and there was lots of overcrowding
  • Women moved from countryside for a better life, were driven to prostitution
• London

  • Child labour was a problem and the city was industrialised
  • The land and the river were being privatised
  • William Blake was a Romantic poet
  • Romanticism was a movement away from modernisation and industrialisation of modern like, and the Romantics wanted humanity to return to being connected to nature
  • A charter was the right to own public land
• Sonnet 43

  • Poem was written as a declaration of love to her husband, Robert
  • Browning lived a life riddled with illness, and was disowned by her family
  • Browning was a prominent Victorian poet, and the poem was part of a collection of sonnets
  • A sonnet is a poem of 14 lines that follows a strict rhyming pattern, typically a love poem
• She Walks in Beauty

  • Lord Byron was a popular English poet, also known for his lavish lifestyle and scandalous affairs, although this poem is more restrained
  • Written in 1814, it was originally intended to be set to music
  • The poem maintains a regular ABABAB rhyme scheme, reflecting the enduring nature of the woman’s beauty and how she’s a balance of different qualities. It’s mostly in iambic tetrameter and uses a lot of enjambment, suggesting the narrator is overwhelmed by the woman’s beauty
• Living Space

  • The poet was born in Pakistan and brought up in Scotland - a poet, artist, and documentary film-maker who divides her time between London and India
  • The fragility of homes in Mumbai, India becomes a wider metaphor for unstable personal and communal identities
• Living Space

  • Poet wants to raise awareness of issues, and the Mumbai slums are closely described to show that this is not an acceptable or safe way for people to have to live - homes are usually made of corrugated sheets, wooden beams, and tarpaulin
  • She recognises the courage of Mumbai residents who are so desperate to improve their life chances that they purposefully move to live in this city from all over the country
• Cozy Apologia

  • Rita Dove is a contemporary American poet, married to Fred Viebah (another writer)
  • Hurricane Floyd hit the east coast of the US in 1999
• Valentine

  • Duffy was the first UK poet laureate
  • She is known for poems challenging stereotypical views on gender, love, and sexuality
  • Father was a Labour candidate, brought up opposing Thatcher’s views on materialism
  • Poem written as a commission for Valentine’s Day 1993
  • Feminist, and part of the LGBTQ+ community
• Death of a Naturalist

  • Seamus Heaney is a Northern Irish poet who grew up on his family farm in a rural area
  • He described his childhood as “an intimate, physical, creaturely existence [...] in a suspension between the archaic and the modern”
  • His younger brother died, aged 4, when Heaney was a teenager
• Death of a Naturalist

  • In the year his book Death of a Naturalist (which contained the poem of the same name) was published, Heaney became a first-time father
  • It is thought also to be a nod to the fear of his maturing sexuality, particularly growing up in a Catholic boarding school where any sinful thoughts or deeds had to be punished and atoned for, and attitudes to sex were certainly very strict
• Hawk Roosting

  Controversial because the symbol of a hawk on top of the world was linked to facism (as the Nazi symbol was an eagle standing on top of a wreath). People believed the hawk in the poem represented a murderous tyrant who ruled using violence and fear (Hitler). Hughes has denied this and explained the poem is about nature and the power of the hawk (a majestic bird of prey).
• The Prelude

  • Wordsworth was born in the Lake District - big influence on his writing (beautiful landscape). He was a Romantic poet
  • His mother died when he was eight years old. This devastated his father, who was usually busy with business. He was sent to a grammar school, while his sister lived with relatives - they did not meet for 9 years
  • His father died when he was thirteen
  • The extract is a part of a masterpiece poem that depicts his early childhood