Genre Essays

Grace Nichols is a poet of Carribean origin, after living in Guyana for the first 27 years of her life working as a freelance journalist, Grace decided to move to England. In England she has written many poems, mainly dealing with the troubles which face imigrants when they enter a country (for instance in some […]

This is a poem written by a Caribbean poet named Grace Nichols. It shows what it means to her as a black women living in England, and she tells us how the Caribbean merges with the English hurricane. The structure of this poem is made up of 8 stanzas consisting of varying lengths. The poem […]

Grace Nichols was born in a place in South America called Guyana but now she lives in London. Themes and images that keep recurring in her poems are of homesickness, emotions, her split culture, perception of self and nature. Grace Nichols shows this through images of food, senses, landscape, nature and colours. In her poems […]

The idea that war is a barbaric and inhumane method of attaining justice is my belief. The act of endangering lives simply to acquire land and assert one’s dignity is devoid of sense. These poems revolve around the Vietnam War, a conflict that claimed numerous lives during the 1970s. The poems consist of vivid descriptions […]

Owen’s poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ uses vivid imagery and language to create a powerful depiction of gas attacks, emphasizing the use of pathos on the reader. Similarly, Larkin’s ‘MCMXIV’ portrays war through vivid imagery and strong language, illustrating the preparations made by the people of England as they leave their homes to fight in […]

Someone’s culture is heir way of life and how they do things. Culture is like a religion where if you’re in a family that’s very religious then you have to go along with the things they do: – e. g. dress in certain clothing and pray when you’re told to. The themes are the way […]

The poets I am going to study each had different reasons for writing their poems of World War One. For example, Wilfred Owen experienced the war at first hand and tried to expose the sheer pain and terror to the British nation. Whereas Jessie Pope never experienced the war, she thought the only way she […]

‘Nothing’s Changed’ is set in district 6, Capetown in South Africa against a background of the end of the Apartheid regime. The speaker is Tatamkhulu Africa and the poem tells of his return to district 6. The speaker appears to have an angry attitude towards the culture it explored. Blessing is set in Dharavi, Mumbai […]

The poems that one has chosen to discuss about are ‘The Road not taken’ by Robert Frost, ‘Blackberrying’ by Sylvia Path, ‘Afternoons’ By Philip Larkin and ‘Churning Day’ by Seamus Heaney. All of these poems use nature to describe their actions in life. The Road Not Taken is a poem about one man’s journey in […]

In this essay I will be dealing with two poems. ” The Richest Poor Man In the Valley” and ” Buffalo “. I will analyse both poems content, ideas of the poet, the overall mood and atmosphere and mechanical structure. In the final part of this essay I will be comparing both poems, looking at […]

I disagree with this statement ‘It is always a positive benefit to live in two cultures at the same time’ because the poem ‘Search for my tongue’ is an autobiographical poem about an Indian woman moving to a different country having to learn another language, this is a negative benefit she will forget her own […]

When making a comparison between the two poems, ‘Search For My Tongue’ by Sujata Bhatt and ‘Ogun’ by Edward Kamau Brathwaite we can see that both are primarily concerned with notions of culture and identity and in particular how one impacts upon the other. The implication being, that the culture into which we are born […]

In ‘Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan’ the speaker is a girl who has one English parent and one parent from Pakistan. As a result she feels torn between the two very different cultures. She does not feel at home in either England or Pakistan. She shows this by saying “I longed for denim and […]

In ‘Not my Business’ by Niyi Osundare when compared with ‘Nothing’s Changed’ by Tatamkhula Afrika, the shared theme of injustice and segregation come across and are present in both poems. ‘Nothing’s Changed’ is quite specific with its whereabouts and period: South Africa and post-apartheid. The poem, like its poet, is consumed with anger and bitterness […]

Throughout the history of life on Earth, suffering has been an integral part of our existence. Unfortunately, there are instances where people unintentionally inflict pain upon one another. Each individual holds their own set of values, whether it be dignity, pride, wealth and power, or physical beauty and allure. Depending on the person, disregard or […]

“Mid-term Break” is an autobiographical poem by Seamus Heaney about the death of a schoolboy’s four-year old brother and the reactions and atmosphere surrounding it. Heaney uses plain matter of fact language to create mood and atmosphere for the poem. The use of ‘sounds’ is significantly used by Heaney to convey words of condolence. The […]

Robert Browning was born 7 May 1812. He began writing poems and at a very young age and learned many languages, also showing an interest in history. This interest in foreign language and history is to a certain extent reflected in his poetry, as many poems are set abroad, and it can be interpreted that […]

The first one I will be studying is called “Blackberry- picking”. Heaney writes about when he was a child, he picked blackberries as a child in the summer. The joy it gave him is likened to an awakening of sexual excitement, finally the disappointment he felt when the fruit turned sour, after all the hard […]

Firstly, a little insight into ‘the laboratory’ is that it is set in the ancien regime of pre-revolutionary france. It imagines an incident in the life of Marie Madelin Marguenie. She poisoned her father and two brothers and planned on killing her husband, with, you guessed it: poison. The laboratory cleverly uses language and structure […]

Mid-Term Break’ is set in three places, unlike ‘Follower’, which is based in one place. The introduction of ‘Mid-Term Break’ is based in the college sick bay. Heaney is sitting there, waiting for the neighbours to drive him home. This is because he is going to go to his brother, Christopher’s, funeral. Christopher was hit […]

Seamus Heaney’s poems, ‘Digging’ and ‘Follower’ portray to us the strong relationship between the father and son, as Heaney tends to look up to the elders in his family. Both poems create that pastoral atmosphere with the title, ‘Digging’ suggests delving into the past. ‘Follower’ on the other hand gives us an image of the […]

In order to write a critical appreciation of this shocking poem by Seamus Heaney, I will make use of language choices, use of structure and subject matter. This poem is about a boy, that tells his experience when he as picked up from school because of the death of his baby brother. This poem is […]