Letters from Yorkshire - Maura Dooley

Question 1

Summary

(5 things)

Answer 1

1. Assume woman is a speaker recalling when friend or lover writes to her.
2. Remembers friend/lover lives life in rural Yorkshire, working in the open air and notes features of season (it is February)
3. Contrasts their situations - him in the garden, her typing on the keyboard, thinking of news, asking is his life more real?
4. Thinks both lives are equally real but gets sense of his life outdoors.
5. They are joined by watching same news and sharing their words.

Question 2

Key Aspects

(6 things)

Answer 2

1. Main themes - communication, love or close friendship
2. Other themes of nature, urban/rural life
3. Five tercets, shift in who is being addressed
4. Free verse with some internal rhymes
5. Many run on lines
6. Images mainly rural

Question 3

Key Setting

(2 things)

Answer 3

Two contrasting settings

1. the garden in Yorkshire - rural, outdoors, exposed to natural elements and the season (“knuckles singing/as they reddened in the warmth” when he steps inside to write”)
2. the speaker’s circumstances - “feeding words onto a blank screen” - suggests speaker finds her work/life unrewarding

Question 4

Natural World

(5 things)

Answer 4

1. “Digging in his garden”, the speaker feels that her friend/lover is connected to the natural world
2. “he saw the first lapwings return” - he is connected with the seasons and its changes
3. This contrasts with a sense of isolation and disconnection hinted at in “feeding words onto a blank screen”
4. Asks the rhetorical question “Is your life more real because you dig and sow?” - says “You wouldn’t say so”, but does not give a direct reply for herself.
5. But speaker says the letters are “pouring air and light into an envelope” - sense speaker yearns for “that other world” to relieve a sense of empty, urban claustrophobia

Question 5

Enjambment

(3 things)

Answer 5

1. A key technique throughout - links each of first three verses and then stanzas 4 and 5.
2. Suggests a bridge between the two worlds of the poem and the speaker and friend/lover
3. “pouring air and light into the envelope” - letter brings some of the air and light of the Yorkshire garden into the speakers urban setting

Question 6

Language

(5 things)

Answer 6

1. Conversational tone to poem - natural language
2. free verse with internal rhymes - digging, planting, singing - suggests sound of spade hitting a stone
3. Alliteration - “Planting potatoes” - suggests boot thudding on heavy soil
4. Assonance and sibilant - “seeing the seasons” - stresses pleasure of gardener at work
5. “Heartful of headlines” - heartful constructed wor - weary of the negative headlines; suggests emotional impact (as opposed to “headful” of headlines”)

Question 7

“Heartful of headlines”

(5 things)

Answer 7

1. “heartful” constructed word - weary of the negative headlines; suggests emotional impact (as opposed to “headful” of headlines”)
2. Speaker is more impacted by the headlines even though both “watch the same news”.
3. Speakers work may be directly linked to the headlines - share the same line stanza “me with my heartful of headlines/feeding words onto a blank screen”
4. Gardeners work is connected to nature, a world of “air and light”
5. All emphasised with alliteration

Question 8

Separation, Communication, long distance links, love

(4 things)

Answer 8

1. Deep connection between gardener and speaker implied by “our soles tap messages across the icy miles”
2. They exchange letters, choose to cimmunicate despite distance between them
3. Contrast this deep communication with other poems (Neutral Tones[“words played between us to and fro”), and imagined meeting in silence in “When We Two Parted”) where connection has been lost though protaganists are right next to each other.
4. “It’s not romance” - is it the gardening that is not romantic, just simple, day to day work; or is it the connection between speaker and gardener - just friendship rather than romantic love

Question 9

Viewpoint

(3 things)

Answer 9

1. Speaker starts by addressing reader
2. Shifts to addressing gardener - “You out there” - at end of stanza 2
3. Shift shows intimacy of relationship, also shown as gardener’s hands are warmed as he writes

Question 10

Natural speech combined with poetic techniques

(6 things)

Answer 10

1. Free verse
2. colloquial langauage - “Still, it’s you”
3. end and internal rhymes - sow, snow, light, night - create cadence that mimick natural language
4. end and internal rhymes “sow” at end of third stanza, “snow” in fourth stanza
5. Alliteration, assonance - see language card
6. Enjambment
7. Caesura - full stops in middle of lines e.g. after “pouring air and light into an envelope” - emphasises key image

Question 11

Contrasts

(5 things)

Answer 11

1. Urban and rural existence
2. Working indoors and ouutdoors
3. Same news but different emotional reactions implied (“heartful of headlines”)
4. Cold of the garden, warming of hands as gardener writes
5. Close relationship despite distance between them (contrast also with other poems)

Answer 12

1. Relationshiip clearly very close - “souls tap out messages” - despite distance
2. Therefore feelings inspired by a remembered intimacy that is not directly revealed
3. Unclear therefore if this is romantic love, deep friendship or even family love