POETRY

• Storm on the Island - Heany

  • Power of nature, power of humans, fear
  • context: in Northern Ireland ' Stormont ' is the name of parliament buildings which suggests the ' storm ' could also be about political distrubances

  We are prepared

  We are bombarded

  spits like a tame cat turned savage

  Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear
• Exposure - Owen

  • Power of nature, effects of conflict, reality of war, loss
  • Context: During the first world war, Owen wrote 'Exposure' in the trenches and tragically died shortly after - he wanted to show the pity of war

  Merciless iced east winds that knive us

  But nothing happens

  Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow

  misery of dawn
• London - Blake

  • Power of humans, power of nature, loss, anger, individual experience
  • Context: Blake was dissatisfied and criticises the Victorian society of London, he wanted society to reform, it is believed that he was motivated by the French revolution

  in every cry of man, in every infant's cry of fear

  marks of weakness, marks of woe

  the mind-forged manacles I hear

  every black'ning church
• Ozymandias - Shelley

  • Power of humans, power of nature, pride and honour
  • Context: Shelley was a romantic poet and focused her writing on the power of nature, she hated monarchies, absolute power and the oppression of ordinary people

  half sunk, a shattered visage of lies

  a sneer of cold command

  my name is Ozymandias, king of kings

  the decay of that colossal wreck
• War Photographer - Duffy

  • effects of conflict, reality of war, memory, anger, guilt, individual experience
  • Context: she was inspired to write this poem because she was friends with someone who worked as a war photographer, she was intrigued by the challenge of recording these events while not being able to do anything, in the poem - the horrors of war doesn't have an exact location because it's Universal

  running children in a nightmare heat

  spools of suffering set out in ordered rows

  five or six for Sunday's supplement

  tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers
• Checking out me history - Agard

  • Power of humans, anger, identity, pride
  • Context: The narrator begins by considering his own identity and how historic figures of his culture aren't learnt of, instead, meaningless rhymes and battles. His broken language throughout shows that Agard is proud of his culture and background (Jamaican accent)

  Dem tell me Dem tell me wha dem want tell me

  Bandage up me eye with me own history, Blind me to me own identity

  But now I checking out me own history, I carving out me own identity
• The Emigree - Rumens

  • Loss, memory, pride, identity, individual experience
  • Context: The poem gives a feminine perspective on power and conflict who had to leave her homeland, she remembers it as being full of sunlight and beauty - but it is now troubled by a tyrant

  branded by an impression of sunlight

  sick with tyrants

  that child's vocabulary (...) but I can't get it off my tongue. It tastes of sunlight
• Remains - Armitage

  • effects of conflict, reality of war, memory, guilt, individual experience
  • Context: poem is based on an account of a British soldier who fought in Iraq

  Probably armed, possibly not

  I swear I see every round as it rips through his life

  His blood-shadow stays on the street

  Tosses his guts back into his body
• The Prelude - Wordsworth

  • Power of nature, Fear, individual experience
  • Context: Wordsworth was a romantic poet, this extract explores the connection between nature and human emotion and the way identity is shaped by experience

  a huge peak, black and huge .... upreared its head

  the grim shape towered up between me and the stars

  huge and mighty forms were a trouble o my dreams