Poppies

Question 1

When is the poem set?

Answer 1

In present day, but reaches right back to the beginning of the Poppy Day tradition

Question 2

How many stanzas are there in Poppies?

Answer 2

4.

The first and last with six lines, the second with eleven and the third with twelve

Question 3

What are breaks in the middle of lines called?

Answer 3

Caesuras

Question 4

What does the use of Caesuras represent in the poem?

Answer 4

The inner emotion of a narrator who is trying to remain calm and composed but is breaking with sadness inside

Question 5

What language is used to describe poppies in the first stanza, but could also be recalling the violence of the son’s death?

Answer 5

‘spams’ ‘disrupting’ ‘blockade’

Question 6

How is imagery used in the second stanza?

Answer 6

“Sellotape bandaged around my hand”

This image carries echoes of battlefield imagery as well as cleaning cat hairs off the blazer. The contrast between the death in battle and the domestic happiness (the boy has been cuddling his cat) is powerful

Question 7

What does the door to the house symbolise?

Answer 7

The door to the world

Question 8

What is the song-bird a metaphor for?

Answer 8

The mother setting her child free

Question 9

What is the poem about?

Answer 9

The nature of grief

Question 10

What is the affect of the poem appearing strong and regular?

Answer 10

It shows that the narrator is trying to hold in the emotions that have been stirred up by the sight of poppies

Question 11

What are examples of similes and metaphors in the poem?

Answer 11

‘gelled blackthorns’
‘released a song bird
‘like a treasure chest’
‘like a wishbone’

Question 12

Poppies was commissioned by the Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy to be part of a collection of?

Answer 12

Poems about war

Question 13

What imagery is consistently used throughout the poem?

Answer 13

Textiles

Question 14

The poem is written in what form?

Answer 14

Free verse

Question 15

What technique does the poem use with ‘My stomach busy/making tucks, darts, pleats’?

Answer 15

Personification

Question 16

What technique does the poem use with‘the world overflowing/like a treasure chest’?

Answer 16

Simile

Question 17

What kind of imagery is used in this poem?

Answer 17

Domestic and War Imagery

Question 18

‘gelled blackthorns’ is what?

Answer 18

A biblical reference

Question 19

‘spasms of paper red’ makes the reader think of what?

Answer 19

An injured body

Question 20

Jane Weir used her experience of what to help her write this poem?

Answer 20

Being a mother to two teenage boys

Question 21

What word best represents the son’s excitement and the mother’s fears?

Answer 21

‘intoxicated’

Question 22

‘individual war graves’ is a reminder of what?

Answer 22

Loss is personal

Question 23

The image of the ‘single dove’ can be described as what?

Answer 23

Ambiguous

Question 24

What does ambiguous mean?

Answer 24

open to more than one interpretation; not having one obvious meaning.

Question 25

What could the dove flying away represent?

Answer 25

The mother’s inner peace being destroyed

Question 26

What could the simile of ‘the world overflowing like a treasure chest’ represent?

Answer 26

The world is full of opportunity

Question 27

‘I was brave’ suggests what?

Answer 27

Soldiers are not the only ones who are brave in war

Question 28

‘Sellotape bandaged around my hand’ suggests what?

Answer 28

The mother is emotionally wounded

Question 29

What is important to note about the time sequence?

Answer 29

It keeps changing

Question 30

What might the change in time sequence reflect?

Answer 30

The mother’s change in emotions