Poetry, Year 11: Winter Swans, Singh Song!, Climbing My Grandfather and which poems pair up (Love and Relationships option)

That their relationship has been through a difficult, miserable time

HintThe weather matches the mood between them.

The whyAfter two days of rain, the couple walk apart and in silence by the lake. Weather mirrors feeling here.

pathetic fallacy

HintThe weather has the same feelings as the characters.

The whyWinter Swans opens with the technique, then personifies the sodden earth as gulping for air. As the poem moves on, the weather clears, and so does the mood.

That swans pair for life

HintA fact from nature which doubles as a comment on the couple.

The whyThe speaker says nothing in reply, but the remark leads towards the reconciliation. The swans become a model for the couple.

Their hands find each other and join: they are reconciled

HintSomething happens without either deciding.

The whyThe speaker sees that their hands have crossed the gap between them, almost without either choosing it. The picture of a bird's folded wings gives a quiet, settled ending.

That the pair have come back together, as two lines now match each other

HintA final stanza echoing its subject.

The whyThe three-line stanzas leave one line unmatched, an imbalance that fits the couple's rift. The two-line ending settles it.

A young British Indian shopkeeper who runs his father's corner shop and has a new wife upstairs

HintHe has a job to do and a person he would rather be with.

The whyHe keeps slipping away from the shop to be with his bride, and the customers complain. The poem is comic but affectionate.

dramatic monologue

HintAs in Porphyria's Lover, one person speaks.

The whyNagra gives the shopkeeper a voice of his own, with a British Punjabi accent on the page. The reader sees his world through his words alone.

That the shop is badly run: they rank it below every other Indian shop on the road

HintHe is distracted, and it shows in the takings.

The whyThe complaints about mislabelled fruit and a dirty floor show he neglects his work, which is the humour of the poem. They repeat in the poem like a chorus.

By spelling words as he would say them and mixing in Punjabi, rather than writing standard English

HintThe page looks as well as sounds different from usual poems.

The whyThe spelling and phrasing show a British Punjabi way of speaking. It makes the poem lively and also says something about how two cultures mix.

They sneak down to the closed shop and sit together looking out at the moon

HintThe workplace becomes a place for romance.

The whyLove changes the ordinary shop into somewhere delightful, and the ending says that their love cannot be priced. A conflict with the older generation runs quietly beneath the comedy.

The grandfather is a mountain that the speaker climbs

HintA climb in which the climber starts at the bottom.

The whyThe old man's shoes, clothes, hands, shoulder and face become features of a mountain. The size difference also suggests how a child sees an adult.

As one block with no stanza breaks, like a solid mountain

HintNo gaps for rest.

The whyThe unbroken shape matches the unbroken climb, and it also makes the phrases hard to predict, like the terrain. There is no regular rhyme or rhythm.

At his shoes, and at the top of his head

HintFrom the bottom of the body to the top.

The whyMoving from his shoes to his head follows the shape of a climb. The route passes through his clothes, hands, shoulder and face.

A calm heartbeat: a sign of warmth and a bond with the old man

HintThe reward is a quiet sound.

The whyThe last part of the climb brings a feeling of being close and safe. It shows that, for all the danger, the climb has been an act of love.

A mountain is unpredictable and uneven, and so is the language of the climb

HintThink of the ground under the climber's feet.

The whyThe uneven phrases and stresses give the poem a rocky feel. Nothing in it tells the reader what to expect next.

15

HintThe same number as in each of the other clusters.

The whyOne is printed in the exam and you choose a second from memory, so every poem has to be known well. The cluster covers love ended, love enjoyed, family ties and distance.

Walking Away

HintA boy leaving after a football game.

The whyThe two poems look at the same relationship from opposite ends. In one the child watches an expert parent; in the other the parent watches a child set out alone.

In Singh Song! the marriage is happy and playful; in The Farmer’s Bride it is cold and frustrated

HintOne wife is full of life; the other will not come near.

The whyBoth are dramatic monologues in the voice of a man, written in dialect. Setting them side by side gives you a ready contrast between love that is shared and love that is not.

Winter Swans

HintOne ends cold and grey, the other with joined hands.

The whyIn Neutral Tones the pond and the colourless sun stay with the speaker as signs of lost love. In Winter Swans the rain clears and the couple come together again.

Before You Were Mine

HintA glamorous young woman in the 1950s.

The whyDuffy looks back to a time before she existed, while Armitage stays with a shared task in the present. Both honour a mother's place in the speaker's life.