poppies Flashcards
________ a song ____ from its ____
released a song bird from its cage
a s_____ d___
a single dove
i ________, hoping to ____ your __________ voice
i listened, hoping to hear your playground voice
who wrote poppies
jane weir
sellotape ________ around __ ____
sellotape bandaged around my hand
i was _____, as i ______ with ___, to the _____ d___
i was brave, as i walked with you, to the front door
poppies shows the power of…..
power of memory
influence
Weir was interested in the voice of women involved in conflict, which she believed were often silenced. So she chose to focus on the grief of a mother and the pain of letting her child go.
how was poppies wrote
“d________ m_______”
Jane Weir wrote Poppies as a dramatic monologue, which is a form of poetry where an imagined speaker addresses a silent audience. In Poppies, a mother speaks to her son who is presumably going off to war. Weir herself describes the poem as a “contemporary war poem”.
Strength and bravery of war victims
Weir celebrates the strength and bravery of those left behind in war - the victims of war who don’t risk their own lives but still suffer.
parents and children
This poem is a depiction of a mother’s pain and grief as she sends her son to war.
It explores the difficulty parents face allowing their children to become independent and enter the world.
There is a contrast between the sadness and nostalgia of the mother and the son’s freedom.
The mother tries to preserve the son’s childishness and reminisces about the games they used to play as a child.
She is coming to terms with the fact that she can no longer keep him safe in the same way she could when he was small.
Your playground voice catching on the wind
metaphor- outpouring of emotion, this is a detailed memory
flashbacks
‘Released a song bird from it’s cage’
Metaphor - now he has gone, she can release her emotions after they have been trapped - crying
‘Sellotape bandaged around my hand’
She uses textile vocabulary to show how she tries to hold on to her son and help him
Your playground voice catching in the wind
Wishing she turn back time to when h was a child, instead she can only hope to hear it “catching in the wind” - could be a metaphor for elusiveness and fleetingness — like the spirit voice of her dead son.
