Poetry analysis

1. Poetry analysis

2. SPOT THE DIFFERENCE There are 15 differences to spot in this picture, the person to do it in the fastest time is the winner!

3. Similarities • It’s always easier to spot differences, but it isn’t always as easy to spot the similarities. What are the similarities between a chocolate orange and a normal orange?

4. Introduction to Poetry • What do you think this poem is about? How do you know this? • How does the title help you know what it’s about? • What line really stands out to you? Why? • What image in each poem is most evocative (Bringing strong images, memories, or feelings to mind.) for you?

6. "Blackberry Picking" by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full, Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

7. The Field Mouse Summer, and the long grass is a snare drum. The air hums with jets. Down at the end of the meadow, far from the radio's terrible news, we cut the hay. All afternoon its wave breaks before the tractor blade. Over the hedge our neighbour travels his field in a cloud of lime, drifting our land with a chance gift of sweetness. The child comes running through the killed flowers, his hands a nest of quivering mouse, its black eyes two sparks burning. We know it will die and ought to finish it off. It curls in agony big as itself and the star goes out in its eye. Summer in Europe, the field's hurt, and the children kneel in long grass staring at what we have crushed. Before day's done the field lies bleeding, the dusk garden inhabited by the saved, voles, frogs, and nest of mice. The wrong that woke from a rumour of pain won't heal, and we can't face the newspapers. All night I dream the children dance in grass their bones brittle as mouse-ribs, the air stammering with gunfire, my neighbour turned stranger, wounding my land with stones.

9. Your Answer • Now try to write the beginning of an answer to the question where you change your notes into sentences and paragraphs.

10. The two poems describe a right Of passage from childhood to Adulthood

11. The two poems show the Violent, rotting nature of life