Poetry analysis

There are 15 differences to spot in this picture, the person to do it in the fastest time is the winner!

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

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?

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?

What do you think this poem is about? How do you know this? (AO1)

How does the title help you know what it’s about? (AO1 and AO2)

What line really stands out to you? Why? (AO2)

What image in each poem is most evocative (Bringing strong images, memories, or feelings to mind.) for you?

"Blackberry Picking" by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sunFor a full week, the blackberries would ripen.At first, just one, a glossy purple clotAmong others, red, green, hard as a knot.You ate that first one and its flesh was sweetLike thickened wine: summer's blood was in itLeaving stains upon the tongue and lust forPicking. Then red ones inked up and that hungerSent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-potsWhere briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drillsWe trekked and picked until the cans were full,Until the tinkling bottom had been coveredWith green ones, and on top big dark blobs burnedLike a plate of eyes. Our hands were pepperedWith 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 bushThe fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.I always felt like crying. It wasn't fairThat all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

The Field MouseSummer, 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 afternoonits wave breaks before the tractor blade.Over the hedge our neighbour travels his fieldin a cloud of lime, drifting our landwith 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 itselfand the star goes out in its eye.Summer in Europe, the field's hurt,and the children kneel in long grassstaring 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 wokefrom a rumour of pain won't heal,and we can't face the newspapers.All night I dream the children dance in grasstheir bones brittle as mouse-ribs, the airstammering with gunfire, my neighbour turnedstranger, wounding my land with stones.

Your Answer

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

The two poems describe a rightOf passage from childhood to

Adulthood

The two poems show the Violent, rotting nature of life