Clearances

Question 1

Main speaker

Answer 1

A speaker standing at their mothers death bed

Question 2

Themes

Answer 2

Relationships, death, loss, parental love

Question 3

Imagery

Answer 3

The poet describes that when his mother died the space around him had been emptied this shows how the only thing that mattered to them at that time was their mothers death

Question 4

Main language features

Answer 4

The poet uses simple language in the poem and little figurative language is used

Question 5

Tone

Question 6

Structure

Answer 6

3 4 line stanzas no rhyme scheme

Question 7

Context

Answer 7

Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 in Mossbawn, NI. He was the eldest of nine siblings – most likely the “we” in the poem.
This poem was published in Heaney’s collection The Haw Lantern in 1987. His mother - Margaret Kathleen Heaney – had died three years before. The book is dedicated to her.
Clearances 7 is the seventh sonnet in a sequence of eight poems.
This sequence of sonnets includes memories of Heaney’s mother’s life, their relationship together and her death.

Question 8

Could compare with

Answer 8

When you are old, funeral blues