Material - Ros Barber

Question 1

Title

Answer 1

symbolic of connection between the speaker and mother

Question 2

‘My mother was the hanky queen’

Answer 2

• colloquial term, relatable tone
• idolisation of the mother, aware of the relationship they had

Question 3

‘not paper tissues bought in packs from late-night garages and shops,’

Answer 3

symbolistic of the disposable and unsentimental nature of modern society

Question 4

‘waving out of trains’

Answer 4

war imagery

Question 5

‘she’d have one, always, up her sleeve.’

Answer 5

represents the constant of the speaker’s mother

Question 6

‘Tucked in the wrist of every cardi, a mum’s embarrassment of lace embroidered with a V for Viv, spittled and scrubbed against my face.’

Answer 6

symbolistic of caring relationship with the mother

Question 7

‘And sometimes more than one fell out as if she had a farm up there where dried-up hankies fell in love and mated, raising little squares.’

Answer 7

The satirical aspect helps to add a familiar tone and humourous effect

Question 8

‘She bought her own; I never did.’

Answer 8

the caesura in the sentence acts as separation between speaker and mother

Question 9

‘the naffest Christmas gift you’d get — my brothers too, more often than not, got male ones: serious, and grey, and larger, like they had more snot.’

Answer 9

• Hankies seem to bond the family
• seen as a nod to old traditional gender roles that have evolved over the years

Question 10

‘Hankies, which demanded irons, and boiling to be purified’

Answer 10

the personification of the hanky reinforces its representation of households in the 50s/ 60s

Question 11

‘And somehow, with the hanky’s loss, greengrocer George with his dodgy foot delivering veg from a Comma van is history,’

Answer 11

a sense of community, it could contrast to the lack of connection in modern society

Question 12

‘lay opposite the dancing school where Mrs White, with painted talons, taught us When You’re Smiling from a stumbling, out of tune piano:’

Answer 12

the specific and visual reference evokes nostalgia.
- the addition of musical and sensory imagery adds to the memories

Question 13

‘Nostalgia only makes me old.’

Answer 13

shortest line of the poem - the narrator feels old in relation to the huge changes in societal attitudes, since their childhood

Question 14

‘And it was me that turned it on to buy some time to write this poem’

Answer 14

irony - the poem itself is the result of poor motherhood

Question 15

‘There’s never a hanky up my sleeve. I raised neglected-looking kids,’

Answer 15

admission of guilt this juxtaposes her mother’s constant while being negative about herself as a mother

Question 16

‘What awkwardness in me forbids me to keep tissues in my bag when handy packs are 50p?’

Answer 16

rhetorical question emphasises the speaker’s trouble with finding her identity as a mother and letting go of her ‘rose-tinted’ memories of her mother

Question 17

‘I miss material handkerchiefs, their soft and hidden history.’

Answer 17

• hankies represent her childhood and familiarity with her mother
• alliteration, identifying the importance of an object so simple, has had for generations

Question 18

‘But it isn’t mine. I’ll let it go. My mother too, eventually, who died not leaving handkerchiefs but tissues and uncertainty:’

Answer 18

hankies brought order to her life and her mother’s ‘constant’. Motherhood in the modern day is complicated and more temporary

Question 19

‘that this is your material to do with, daughter, what you will.’

Answer 19

the mother’s voice coming through gives her daughter permission to do things her way of motherhood. passing over the mantel of motherhood.

Question 20

Overall messages:

Answer 20

• the nostalgia of a past-time
• finding your individuality and letting go of the past or family experiences
• grief and how we hold on to artificial things that remind is of loved ones

Question 21

Structure

Answer 21

• iambic tentrametre (8 syllables)
• 10 regular stanzas - 8 lines
• half rhyme consonance and assonance (reflects the connection between mother and daughter)