GCSE English Literature podcasts - Poetry

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TESTAMENT: Yo yo, welcome to the Bitesize Poetry Podcast. I'm poet, educator and rapper Testament. In this series we're going to guide you through some of the key things you need to know to help you write about poetry in your exam. In this episode, I'm going to talk about language, form and structure. There's loads more about all of those on the Bitesize website, so make sure you check those out.

TESTAMENT: Right now, I'm joined by poet and teacher Caroline Bird. Hello Caroline.

CAROLINE: Hello, hello.

TESTAMENT: When you're writing about poetry it's important to say something about the poet's intention, why a poet has chosen to do something. Because we poets write poems to create meaning, don't we?

CAROLINE: A poem is trying to communicate what it feels like to be alive. And you don't have to have studied poetry, this could be the first poem you've ever read. Your interpretation is just as valid as anyone else's, and what it makes you feel, what you see in it, is completely yours. And you have the power of that.

TESTAMENT: You have the power!

CAROLINE: Yeah.

TESTAMENT: When you're writing about poetry it's always good to look at what perspective is the speaker of the poem speaking from. Is it a third person, he, him, she, they. Is it a second person, you, you're doing this, you're doing that. Or is it the first person, I'm doing this? You know what, Caroline let's dig more into the first person perspective.

CAROLINE: That directness of I, taking you straight in, can be really effective. But you have to ask other questions as well cos there are some poems written from the I that feel quite formal and don't feel chatty or intimate. Sometimes people talk about the speaker of the poem. And there's a distance between the poet and the speaker, like they are adopting a persona or a character.

So in the I there's still questions you can ask about, is it from the poet, is this really the poet [T: Yeah.] speaking directly to me?

TESTAMENT: Gotcha, so like the poet can sometimes be writing, I did this, I did that. But actually, they're taking on a character, a soldier or a nurse or whatever it is, they're taking on the perspective.

CAROLINE: Exactly

TESTAMENT: So, what is imagery? Well imagery is descriptive writing which appeals to one or more of the senses. Often imagery is creating a picture, but it can also be something that triggers smell or shows touch. And it might be describing a scene, or it can be figurative like a metaphor.

So, a poem could use lots of nature imagery for example, to describe something happening to someone. So, if I got a text from my girlfriend and she said, oh sorry love it's over, I could wilt like a flower.

CAROLINE: The main thing that I use imagery for is to take a feeling, and to try and make it something I can see. And the way that you create feeling in a poem is through mental pictures. People often say a poem is trying to show, not tell, [T: Right.] right?

And what that means is yeah you are trying to bring it to life so that the reader can see it. For example, if we've got a massive crush on someone, we don't sit down and think, I really like this person, and just have a statement in our head, do we? No, oh we think about, you know, the way that they brush the hair out of their eyes, right?

We think of a picture in our head, and that is what creates the feeling in our hearts. And it's the same thing in a poem.

TESTAMENT: Okay, let's talk about the first and the last lines of poems. Why are they important?

CAROLINE: The first line of a poem is where the door opens. The first thing we hear, the first thing we see, it can sometimes lead us gently into the poem where we don't know where we're going yet. Sometimes it can set the whole scene in a first line. There are some poems where the first line is almost throwaway like, oh yes come in, whatever. And then some poems absolutely knock down the door of that first line like boom, we're off, you know?

TESTAMENT: And then what about the last line then?

CAROLINE: Well, a last line. Often, we think a last line is where the poem lands right? We think oh the last line, everything will be answered in the last line. But not necessarily. So sometimes a poem ends with a, the door firmly shuts, everything is clear, wrap a bow around it there we go. But often poems end with a door opened outward, they end on a bit of a mystery.

And there are some poems that don't seem to end at all, they just seem to hover menacingly in the air.

TESTAMENT: Okay let's talk about tense. So often when we're looking at poems sometimes, they write in the past tense, so it's happened before. Or sometimes the present tense, like it's happening right now. Or even sometimes in the future tense, what's gonna happen in the future. When poets write in different tenses, what do you think of the impact of these different, you know, past, present or future tenses are?

CAROLINE: Someone is saying something in the present tense, they don't know the ending of their own poem, right? Cos it's happening line by line, which ups the jeopardy, it ups the danger. It creates an intimacy, a directness. The past tense has more of a seeming security to it cos it's like, well this has happened, and I've definitely come out the other side of it as you can tell because I'm telling you now. The future tense is gonna have lots of hope and anxiety in it, but it's all emotional.

TESTAMENT: They're all tools that the writer's using isn't it to try and create mood, [C: Yeah.] tone, expectations. That's brilliant.

TESTAMENT: So, a quick word about form. Form's mega important. One of the first things I'll be looking at is stanzas, how has the poet grouped the lines together. Is it that this poem is actually groups of four lines? Or six lines? Is actually the whole poem one long group, one giant stanza? If they've broken up the lines, well why have they broken up there?

Is each stanza, is each group about a different part of the story? And then there's also line length. Are all the lines really long, are all the lines really short, or are they varied? And what does that say about the emotion or the subject that the poet is writing about. So finally, we're gonna talk about line breaks, those gaps in the poems. Cos sometimes you look at a poem and it might not seem to make sense.

Like why does the line stop there in the middle of a sentence and then carry on, on the next line below? Tell us about that.

CAROLINE: Okay, like so geeky about line breaks. You are controlling where the reader breaths. Right if you'd written a poem about a massive argument, you might decide that all the line breaks are gonna come in really weird places. Because then that's gonna create an anxiety, right? Of if you've written a poem about a climb or a journey, you might wanna break some of the sentences so we can feel like an effort, like, Oh, this line is having to roll – over onto the next line. So, think about it, a line break is the breath of the poem

TESTAMENT: Um hm. The word left on the end of a line is often the word that a poet wants to emphasise, especially if it's at the end of a stanza. A line break creates a pause which makes the reader reflect on that last word a little more. So, there's a bit more meaning. sort of it draws our attention to it at the end of a line. So, we've got to think why the poet feels that word is important.

TESTAMENT: Thank you, Caroline. Thanks for listening to the Bitesize Poetry Podcast. And don't forget there's loads more to check out, search Bitesize on BBC Sounds.

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TESTAMENT: Word up, welcome to the Bitesize Poetry Podcast. My name's Testament, I'm a rapper, writer and poet. And in this series, I'm going to give you loads of tips to help you write about poetry in your GCSE English Literature exam. This episode is all about how to use quotes because this is so important, you have to use quotes, fam.

TESTAMENT: I am joined by the amazing poet Caroline Bird, hello.

CAROLINE: Hello.

TESTAMENT: What tips have you got to help us to remember quotes?

CAROLINE: The way I do it is I say them over and over again. I mean that might sound obvious, but I say them whilst brushing my teeth, I say them whilst walking down the road in time to my own footsteps. Sometimes I'll write them out. The only way to do it is to make sure that your mouth knows it, not just your brain right? And if there's something strange about the quote, try and relate to it personally. It's really hard to remember a quote if it means nothing to you.

TESTAMENT: And often I use like sticky notes as well or I write them down, I might stick it in my bedroom somewhere. Get my loved ones to test me, come on mum test me on this.

CAROLINE: You can sing it.

TESTAMENT: Oh yeah, oh gosh the number of songs I've made up to remember a quote for an exam in my life, it's crazy. Don't worry no one has to hear you singing it, but you can make up your own little melody.

CAROLINE: Yeah.

TESTAMENT: If you're looking at a poem and you want to pick a good quote to remember in your exam, I'd go for a quote that does more than one thing. So, something where you can write loads about it, the imagery, perhaps the tone, the perspective. So right now, I'm sat in a studio with Caroline and she's wearing the most amazing green shoes. They're green brogues, so I'm free styling here.

Caroline wore shoes as green as the first flush of spring. [C: Okay, right okay] It's a pretty bad line but, it does loads.

CAROLINE: So okay right okay, let's roll with it. So, if you give me, Caroline wore shoes as green as the first flush of spring right. [T: Yeah.] So, to begin with if I was gonna write about that you might go okay, well this sounds like definitely a compliment. And this flurry of words that green as the first flush of spring, it –

TESTAMENT: First flush ooh alliteration [C: First flush right.] that's emphasis, isn't it?

CAROLINE: But then I'd think, well it's also quite over the top, isn't it? And maybe I'd write about the exaggeration of the speaker, and why is the speaker so obsessed with this person and their shoes, right? That's interesting.

TESTAMENT: The good thing is there's no wrong answers because I obviously meant it, it's like spring is a place of growth and new life and great things. So, I'm thinking oh wherever Caroline goes she's bringing new good and positive vibes and positive energy.

CAROLINE: Exactly.

TESTAMENT: And but we can both, using it, you're saying it's too much it's hyperbole, we're exaggerating it. And I'm saying no it's a compliment and my deep emotions of how inspired I am by your poetry knowledge. So there, with one bit of imagery you've got a little bit of alliteration, first flush, that's right that's quite cool.
You’ve got, as green as, so this is a simile. And the reason the poet here, me, muggins here, is using that is to try and demonstrate something. And it's using nature imagery, what does nature mean to us in this context?

CAROLINE: And you've got intimacy, because you're not saying, Caroline Bird's shoes, you're saying Caroline's shoes. So, you're implying that the reader knows me, you know? Which creates a closeness with the reader.

TESTAMENT: Sometimes it's hard to remember massive quotes. So even if you just remember, okay first flush or, just spring even. It's like oh the speaker of the poem compared Caroline's shoes to spring. That's valid as well. If there's multiple uses for the quotes that's better. So, for poems about nature, great, and we can use, talk about how spring is, refers to nature and it's positive or negative.
Or if it's about relationships then it's like okay well that's great. We've got nature and relationships, and it can be used for multiple uses.

TESTAMENT: First and last lines often make great quotes. Why do they make great quotes?

CAROLINE: Cos this is where we meet the poem, and it's where we leave the poem, right. And it tells us the first impression, and it also tells us yeah the emotional gesture that happens at the end. Think like if you were performing this poem would people be crying, would they be clapping, would they be looking at you in weird silence? You know, what is what has it made you feel right at the end?

TESTAMENT: Even in stories, I mean to use once upon a time as an example, so once upon a time tells us loads about a story, okay. It happened a long time ago, did it really happen, it sounds like a fairy tale. And at the end they lived happily ever after, let's say. Again, it's like, well it's leaving us with a different tone again, you know.

CAROLINE: Remember that a poem doesn't always end with an answer. [T: That's right.] A poem can end with a question, or something that creates a mystery.

TESTAMENT: Totally, if it said, they all fell in a big hole, and they lived happily ever after, you might question oh is that ending actually ambiguous. Actually, it hasn't got a set meaning. It's making you, leaving you with a mystery.

CAROLINE: Quite like that line.

TESTAMENT: I'm off to the hole now.

TESTAMENT: It's useful to listen to the rest of this series, even if it's not poems you're studying. You can hear how we talk about quotes and why we pick them, and it will help you spot good quotes in your poems. So, let's sum everything up. You need to back up your answers with quotes, and you need to pick a useful quote. What's a useful quote?

CAROLINE: Well, a useful quote is something that means the most to you. So, when you're reading the poem, what are your favourite lines? What are the ones that you can picture the clearest in your head? What are the ones that sound interesting to you? The best way to memorise a poem and get involved in a poem is to have skin in the game. So, you've got to think, if you make it mean something to you, you will care about knowing bits. It's like caring as a type of exam strategy.

TESTAMENT: Yeah, and once you've found that quote that you want to use, write down all the different ways you can use it, and different ways you can analyse it. So that could be tense, it could be imagery, it could be which poetic device is it using, is it simile, is it a metaphor, is it personification? What does it mean for the story of the poem? Is this the part of the poem where ooh the baddie's turned to a goodie or something's changed in the emotion or the tone of the poem.
Have a write down of all the different ways in which you can use that quote to back up your ideas. So Caroline, do you find it easier to remember a longer quote, maybe a whole line, or maybe even two lines, rather than short ones?

CAROLINE: I think memorising a longer quote yeah it's easier to feel emotionally connected to it.

TESTAMENT: Um hm, if you can't remember a whole line don't worry. A quote can be just a word, so pick the most important word or words, and focus on remembering those. Let's go through tips for remembering quotes one more time.

CAROLINE: Okay. Say it over and over and over. Say it whilst you're brushing your teeth. Say it in time to your footsteps. You don't have to say it in like a posh “poemy” voice, right? You can turn it into a song. You can say it in, you know, weird voices. You know, you can say it over and over, so your mouth knows it.

TESTAMENT: Wicked.

TESTAMENT: Thank you for listening to this Bitesize Poetry Podcast. Thank you to my guest Caroline Bird. Caroline is staying with me because in the next episode we are talking about unseen poetry, so meet us over there when you're ready. And there's loads more Bitesize revision podcasts, check them out on BBC Sounds. Peace.

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TESTAMENT: Yes. Welcome to the Bitesize poetry podcast. I'm Testament. I'm a writer, rapper and poet, and this is our series on how to write about poetry. This episode is focusing on writing about poems you've never seen before, unseen poetry. Stick with us, and we'll give you some keys about how to do just that. We've got a poet, teacher and legend, Caroline Bird, you're with me. Caroline, what's the first thing you think when you look at a poem?

CAROLINE: Hello.

TESTAMENT: (laughs). Hello.

CAROLINE: I read it through. Read it from beginning to end and see what it does to me.

TESTAMENT: I mean often when I look at a poem for the first time, I'm trying to think well, what's it made me feel? What's it triggered in me? Has it given me an emotion? If this was a kind of person, you know, what kind of person would it be? Would it be an angry person? Is this an angry poem? Is it a joyful one? Is it one that's thinking about memories? Just relax and take a breath and let the poem speak to me.

CAROLINE: You're in the exam hall, you've got this piece of paper in front of you, it looks just like a load of words. How do you make these words come to life in your imagination? Sounds obvious, but read the whole thing, before you start trying to look at it like a crossword puzzle, from the title, all the way to end.
It might help you to mouth the words as you're reading them. What are you seeing? What is the journey like?

[music]

TESTAMENT: So, we've worked out how our initial response is to the poem ourselves, but what are we gonna write about it? So, my first piece of advice is really simple. Read the question. I'm gonna say that again. Carefully read the question. You might feel one thing, and wanna write a million pages and spend ages writing about one aspect of the poem, but actually it's not what the exam's asking you to do.
Read the question carefully. It can also give you clues within the question to what there is in the poem to unlock. It might help you understand the poem better. So for example, if the question says how does this poem use nature imagery to create a feeling of hope, then you know, next time you read it, you're gonna be looking for those clues, for those times in the poem, when nature is there, and you're gonna underline everything to do with nature, or anything that might be helpful, and you can highlight and underline those bits, those important words, in the question, and then in the text.

CAROLINE: And I would even advise reading it through first, before you read the question, and then read the question, and read it through with that question in mind. And then you can start reading it with interpretation in mind.

[music]

TESTAMENT: Yeah, so when you're doing that, you're underlining key words in the poem, and when we look back at what we've underlined, I guess you could sort of work out like is there a theme here? What's a theme?

CAROLINE: Well, a theme is a recurring idea that goes through the poem. But it's not gonna be hidden. The thing about a them is if it's hidden, it's not a theme, right, ok.

TESTAMENT: Right.

CAROLINE: So, you can really like trust yourself with this.

TESTAMENT: So, it's always good to say something about what you think the theme, or themes, are in the poem. And remember, to find a word, or a line in the poem, or quote, to back that up. Now once you've read through the poem, look back again through it and see, can you spot any patterns, anything that the writer keeps doing? Identifying patterns is a great way to develop answers. If a poet's doing the same sort of thing in a few different places, group these quotes together when you're writing about them. You wanna think about tone. Ok, what do we mean by tone?

CAROLINE: Well, think about like tone of voice. If I was like oh well, I really, really like your shoes, you'd be like well, she sounds angry, I don't know why, you know.

TESTAMENT: (laughs)

CAROLINE: Or if I was like oh, it's just so wonderful to be here today like this. Think about the personality of the poem. Does it have an angry tone? Does it have an intimate, gentle tone? Does it have an anxious tone? Think about like voice, and how the poem is speaking to you, as a person.

TESTAMENT: I think that's great. And often poems can have a change of tone. Guess we've gotta look at the tone of the poem and go oh, it starts off hopeful and happy, and then there's a change of tone and we're left feeling like oh, confused, or despair, or something like that.

CAROLINE: Exactly, like we've all had arguments where there's been a change of tone halfway through right. Like where you're really irritated, ra ra ra ra, and then at the last minute you go maybe I'll pick you up a juice on the way back home, or I'm sorry for shouting. And there's suddenly a change of tone, right. It happens in life all the time.

TESTAMENT: So, look out for consistency of tone, so the tone might be the same throughout, or does the tone change, and where does it change, are there any quotes that back up how the tone started, and then how it's changed.

Ok. So you're in the exam. Carefully look at the question. Don't rush ahead. Really understand what is it asking for. Make your points and give a short quote to back it up, and remember to explore anything else that is interesting with that quote. So the imagery, the language, the perspective, and you don't need to write loads.Caroline, final bit of advice on quotes.

CAROLINE: A good quote is not gonna run out of ideas on you, right. You can keep ripping on it and coming up with new things and yeah, just treat it like a – a kind of endless sponge that you can keep ringing water out of.

TESTAMENT: The infinite sponge.

CAROLINE: The infinite sponge.

TESTAMENT: Thank you, Caroline, and thank you for listening to this Bitesize poetry podcast. Remember, there's more about approaching unseen poetry on the Bitesize website. And you can listen again to these episodes, and get the info locked in your brain, and then check out all the other episodes where I'm comparing poems. You can find those, and all the other really helpful Bitesize podcasts, on BBC Sounds. See you later.

ANNOUNCER: BBC Sounds: music, radio, podcasts.

[music plays]

TESTAMENT: Hello and welcome to the Bitesize poetry podcast. I'm Testament, a writer, rapper and poet, and in this series I'm talking poetry. In this episode we're comparing 'Exposure' by Wilfred Owen and an extract from 'The Prelude' by William Wordsworth. We're looking at language, form, structure, theme and context – some of the things you will need to write about in your exam. Make sure you've listened to the first three episodes in this series on BBC Sounds 'cause this is where we take you through the basics.

[music plays]

TESTAMENT: Today, though, I am joined by poet extraordinaire Owen Sheers, who is gonna help us compare the poems. What's up, Owen? Are you good?

OWEN: Hey, Testament. I'm very good. Thanks for having me here.

TESTAMENT: Absolute pleasure. We're gonna talk through three key points today: the theme of the power of nature; technique – both poems use personification to show that power; and how the narrators in each poem respond to that power. Right, first, let's just quickly run through what these poems are about. Both 'Exposure' and 'The Prelude' are autobiographical. They are based on the poet's lived experience. Wilfred Owen, who wrote ‘Exposure’, was a war poet and died in World War I. Owen, what happens in ‘Exposure’?

OWEN: 'Exposure' is about a group of soldiers in the First World War in the trenches. But what Wilfred Owen writes about is not a moment of fighting; it's a moment of waiting. And it's in the middle of winter. So what they're really suffering from is that extreme cold and that fear of what's to come.

TESTAMENT: I'm gonna talk now about William Wordsworth. William Wordsworth was a romantic poet. The Romantic Movement happened in literature, art and music in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and one of its main themes was nature and the power of nature. Remember to check out the Bitesize website for loads more information on the Romantic Movement.
You don't need to know everything about ‘The Prelude’. Owen, can you tell us what happens in this extract?

OWEN: So, essentially, we've got Wordsworth as a young boy. He borrows/steals a boat.

TESTAMENT: Cheeky.

OWEN: Very cheeky. On the lake. And at the start of this extract, you know, nature feels quite safe. But as he rows out across the lake the mountain peaks start to rise above him. And he finds it quite frightening.

[music plays]

TESTAMENT: Okay, now we've got some context, let's get into our first key point, because while 'Exposure' is a war poem and 'The Prelude' is a romantic poem, both of these poems are about the power of nature. The first quote I wanna talk about is from the first line of Wilfred Owen's ‘Exposure’: 'Merciless iced east winds.'

OWEN: It's a really strong first line, isn't it? Because it sets us immediately in that cold winter landscape. It's the sound world of this first line. If you listen to that, "The merciless iced east winds."

TESTAMENT: There's a lot of "sss" going on.

OWEN: A lot of "sss". It feels like those really cutting winter winds.

TESTAMENT: And in 'The Prelude' we've got the speaker out in nature, but nature is something huge and scary. This is a great quote: "The grim shape towered up."

OWEN: Yeah. And it comes in the middle of this extract. And it's as if the line itself suddenly rises up. He says "towered up." You see all of your associations with towers, but you feel as if all the towers you've ever known have suddenly got movement. So, you know, even as I'm talking to you I'm sort of leaning back 'cause it's as if something huge is rising in front of me.

[music plays]

TESTAMENT: [makes rapping sounds] Okay. So, for our next key point we're staying with the mighty power of nature. And we're building on that, because both poems share a technique. They both use personification to show this power. Owen, can we dig more into personification?

OWEN: This is a device that poets use. And what they do, essentially, is they give something that isn't human, like a cliff or the wind, they give this non-human element human qualities.

TESTAMENT: I love the personification in ‘Exposure’. You've got "air that shudders". You've got "mad gusts". Obviously, gusts of wind, but they can't be mad or, you know, lose sanity. You know what I mean? "Mad gusts." And then, of course, that first line that we talked about, "the merciless iced east winds that knive us." It's like a person, isn't it?

OWEN: That personification, it builds on itself. So first of all the wind is "merciless," which—

TESTAMENT: What does "merciless" mean?

OWEN: To act without mercy. So, with real intent to cause harm. And this is—

TESTAMENT: And no-, no kindness there being shown.

OWEN: Exactly. No kindness. Kind of a relentless cruelty. But then it-, the line continues to say that the wind is "kniving" us. "The merciless iced east winds that knive us."

TESTAMENT: Ouch.

OWEN: Yeah, exactly. So you're feeling that pain. But also what's interesting is that you're probably coming to this poem knowing it's about the First World War; you're expecting the violence to come from the fighting in the war. And here it is: it's coming from the wind. 'Cause really, we know the wind isn't choosing to be cruel, it's not choosing to hurt them. But in the poet's way of describing this moment it feels as though everything is out to get them.

TESTAMENT: And in ‘The Prelude’, about halfway through, something really interesting happens. And nature, which has been fairly normal so far, suddenly changes. And we get this mountain that turns into a person and starts coming for him. We get lines like, "Up reared its head." So, lifted his head. And "towered up." And this great quote, "Strode after me." Imagine that. A mountain striding after you. To be clear, a mountain hasn't actually turned into a person. This isn't a horror movie. This is a literary device.

OWEN: So he's rowing out into the lake. And as he does, the mountain appears – as you say, appears – to rise up. It's not really rising up. Wordsworth uses personification in all the ways that you've spoken about to really turn the volume up on that sense of awe and fear. You know, so the idea of it striding after him I'm sure is again the poet projecting their own guilt upon the mountain.And the way that he describes it that really works for me is using this word "towered". It's a very powerful, visual word, isn't it? But it's a moment that also marks a turn in the poem, doesn't it? A shift—

TESTAMENT: It's like there's a-, it's like a gear shift. It's like all of a sudden it's one kind of speed or tone and then… twitch.

OWEN: It is, it is. And if you want to in your exams, there's a really useful word that you can use here, which is "volta". So "volta" is the Italian word for a turn. And it's become the term that people use for that shift in a poem.

[music plays]

TESTAMENT: For our final comparison we're gonna talk about how the narrators in both these poems feel about the power of nature – because they have different responses, don't they?

OWEN: Yeah, they do. I think from the very start of 'Exposure' you can tell that they feel hopeless. And that it isn't just them. You know, all the way through the poet is using the collective pronouns of "we" and "our" and "us". Whereas in 'The Prelude' there's a shift. At the start there's a real confidence in the young Wordsworth as he nicks the boat, you know, and he feels quite comfortable in nature. But then as he rows out into the middle of the lake there's a real shift and he experiences that awesome power – that dark awesome power.

TESTAMENT: Yeah, there's a great quote near the beginning of 'The Prelude' which sort of shows this sort of young arrogance. The speaker says, "Proud of his skill." But this pride crumbles when faced with nature. Let's pick out some lines from ‘Exposure’, because in that first stanza we've got the word "wearied" and towards the end we've got the line "we turn back to our dying." It's pretty heavy.

OWEN: It is. The volume is turned up on that. Now, of course, on the one level, you know, dying is natural, everything dies. But because of everything that's gone before we have to feel that there's a sense of pointlessness. These soldiers aren't just living in fear of the fighting and in the pain of the natural weather but essentially they're facing their own death.

[music plays]

TESTAMENT: Okay, so to wrap things up, let's go over what we've learnt today. Both poems are autobiographical. 'Exposure' is a war poem and 'The Prelude' is a romantic poem, but both share the central theme of the power of nature. In 'Exposure' the speaker is being battered by what?

OWEN: "The merciless iced east winds."

TESTAMENT: And in 'The Prelude' we've got this huge mountain.

OWEN: "The grim shape towered up."

TESTAMENT: Both use personification to create images that show this power. Again, "The merciless iced east winds that knive us." And the mountain that gets a head and legs in ‘The Prelude’?

OWEN: "Strode after me."

TESTAMENT: Yeah, "strode after me." And finally, in "Exposure", the speaker submits to this power all along. They are…?

OWEN: "Wearied."

TESTAMENT: While in 'The Prelude' the speaker starts off "proud of his skill," but ultimately they have to acknowledge the power of nature. Thank you, Owen. That was awesome.

OWEN: Thank you, Testament.

TESTAMENT: And thank you for listening to this Bitesize poetry podcast. And if you want to be proud of your skill, we've got plenty of podcasts to help sharpen you up. Just search Bitesize on BBC Sounds. Peace!

ANNOUNCER: BBC sounds music. Radio. Podcasts.

TESTAMENT: Yo. Welcome to the Bitesize Poetry podcast. My name is Testament. I'm a writer, rapper and poet, and your guide to this series. I'm showing you how to write about poetry in your GCSE English literature exam. Make sure you check out the first three episodes in this series, where we cover the fundamentals of what you need to know.

But today, we'll be looking at 'Remains', by Simon Armitage and 'Kamikaze', by Beatrice Garland. We're going to talk through what these poems are about and give you three points of comparison. The theme, the psychological effects of conflict, the use of the first person and third person, and tone. And we're lucky enough to be joined by the writer of 'Remains' himself, Simon Armitage.

SIMON: Hi, there.

TESTAMENT: So Simon, 'Remains' is such a powerful poem. Can you tell us what is it about?

SIMON: 'Remains' is a poem about post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. So, people who've seen or experienced things which are very damaging to them psychologically, and they struggle to get over it.

TESTAMENT: So how does this manifest for the soldier who's the subject of this poem?

SIMON: Well, the soldier in the poem was a real soldier, and I actually took a lot of his verbatim testimony. These are the things that he was actually saying to me, his little verbal mannerisms and his phrases, and I brought them straight into the poem. And he told me the story of how he'd been involved in a shootout. He'd ended up killing somebody. And the guilt of that, and the memory of that, the trauma of that incident, stays with him. It remains with him.

TESTAMENT: So, I want to turn now to 'Kamikaze', by Beatrice Garland. This is a poem about a kamikaze pilot, someone who supposed to die as part of a mission.

SIMON: So, this is about a man who sets out on a suicide mission and decides not to go through with it. And he then has to live with the shame and dishonour of not killing people, which, when you put it in those terms, sounds incredibly bizarre. And it's his family, actually, who shun him.

TESTAMENT: For people who don't know, this is World War Two, these kamikaze pilots would be sent out in a plane with loads of explosives on it, and they would fly them into normally the enemy ships for the Japanese Empire. By doing so, you're honouring the emperor and honouring your family and you’re honouring your culture.

[music]

TESTAMENT: Remember, there's loads more about both these poems on the BBC Bitesize website, so make sure you check those out. So, the first key comparison we're gonna dig into is the psychological effects of conflict. In your poem, Simon, we have someone haunted by violence, unable to function in society. It's an internal crisis. And in 'Kamikaze' we have someone who's turned their back on violence, but find themselves shamed and shut out of society. So that's more of an external crisis. Simon, can you read a section of your poem for us?

SIMON: “And he's carted off in the back of a lorry. End of story. Except not really. His blood shadow stays on the streets and out on patrol, I walk right over it, week after week.”

TESTAMENT: Thank you. Well, that line, his blood shadow stays on the street. That line, Simon. It's a strong, haunting image, a shadow. So, is that shadow one of the meanings of the title, 'Remains'?

SIMON: I think the word remains echoes through the poem. There are the remains of the dead man on the ground. But there are what remains of those remains in the soldier's head when he comes home. That phrase blood shadow. When we interviewed the young soldier, that's what he said. He used those words. This man had bled out on the pavement and left the outline impression of his own body. And as soon as he said it, I knew I was going to use it in the poem. It's a readymade compound image. It's a very, very strong phrase.

TESTAMENT: Can you just define what is a compound image?

SIMON: Uh, it's a very compact form of language that creates a picture of something. So, without having to describe it in literal or graphic terms, it speaks for itself. I think an image also does something a little bit subconsciously. It triggers something emotionally in us, as a response. Rather than just comprehending it or understanding it, we actually feel it.

TESTAMENT: I'm just going to read two lines from 'Kamikaze'. "They treated him as though he no longer existed. As though he no longer existed". Now this is a simile, really, which shows the lasting after effects of the decision which the kamikaze pilot made.

SIMON: If he had of carried through the mission, he wouldn't have existed. Uh, he decides not to, so he does still exist, but he's being treated as if he doesn't. It's interesting to me in the poem that the moment when he seems to decide to turn round is when he thinks of his own father and the fishing boat that he might have been sailing down in the sea. He does see the beauty of the world underneath him. And presumably that makes him think of his own life, and the value of his own life, and the value of the lives of others as well.

[Music]

TESTAMENT: The next key point I want to talk about is perspective. Simon, your poem, 'Remains', is first person narrative, someone telling the story from their own point of view. What did this allow you to do in this poem?

SIMON: I want you, as the reader or the listener, to experience the poem as if he's standing in front of you, telling you an anecdote or a story. One of the ways in which I've done that is to use fairly colloquial language. This is, you know, for want of a better phrase, street language, language that you would use with your friends. It's not grand, lofty, poetic language. It's very casual.

TESTAMENT: In 'Kamikaze' the use of perspective seems a little bit more complicated, cos it begins in the third person. They treated him as though he no longer existed, and it seems to be quite distant. And then we shift into the first person, and we realise that the narrator is actually really close to this kamikaze pilot, and we get this sense of familial relationship. It's talking with a family member that you actually know. We hear about my mother. Why is that distancing being used, do you think?

SIMON: Sometimes as a writer, you feel as if you can be a bit more daring with the language if you stand at distance from the subject, so you don't get over emotionally attached to it. And I think that's what's happened here, really a certain amount of detachment, because they're not too close to the story.

[music]

TESTAMENT: Finally, we're going to compare the end of both poems, and we can really tell a lot about the tone, I think, from both of them, because they both have quite bleak, seemingly hopeless, endings. The last line of your poem, Simon, is "His bloody life in my bloody hands". Let's talk about that. Why the repetition, bloody?

SIMON: I suppose there's something dramatic going on there. He's using strong language, but it's literal. He's got blood on his hands. That's what we say when people are guilty.

TESTAMENT: And then there's the bleakness of how 'Kamikaze' ends, where the kamikaze pilot wondered which had been the better way to die. So there, at the end of 'Kamikaze', we have the word die. Although the kamikaze pilot hadn't chosen a physical death, or maybe he has died in another way, in a more metaphorical way, at the end of the poem.

SIMON: It's a very powerful line at the end of "Kamikaze," because what he's experiencing there, because he chose a path of peace, is a social death.

[music]

TESTAMENT: Okay, let's wrap up what we've learned. We have two poems about the psychological and social impacts of war, the horrors of killing. Even when you haven't gone through with the killing yourself. Both talk of how society pushes individuals into war, and the writers skilfully show different ways that people are affected. Let's go through the quotes again. In your poem, Simon, we have the soldier who is damaged by what he has seen and done. What is the image he's haunted by?

SIMON: The quote is, "His blood shadow stays on the street".

TESTAMENT: If you can only memorise one bit for your exam, that compound image, blood shadow, that's a really, really useful tool for you. In 'Kamikaze', we have a pilot was sent on a one-day mission to sacrifice himself, but doesn't go through with it. And his society shuns him and ignores him for not going through with it. Simon, can you give us the quote that sort of shows that this is kind of a living death.

SIMON: "As though he no longer existed".

TESTAMENT: Excellent in 'Remains', Simon, what perspective are you using?

SIMON: First person

TESTAMENT: And 'Kamikaze', we seemingly start with the third person narrative, which then definitely shifts to first person in the final two stanzas. Thank you, Simon Armitage, and thank you very much for listening to this Bitesize poetry podcast. We've got plenty of other podcasts covering science and a lot of the other texts on the English curriculum.Search for Bitesize on BBC Sounds.

[music]

ANNOUNCER: BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.

TESTAMENT: Yo, welcome to the Bitesize Poetry Podcast. I'm Testament, I'm a writer, rapper and poet. And in this series, I'll be comparing poems and looking at language, form, structure, theme and context, the main things you need to know for your exam. Make sure you've got a pen to make notes cos I'm gonna be giving you some really good quotes to use.

And if you haven't listened to the first few episodes in this series, you really should. There's some super useful tips to analyse poetry, and to make you feel more confident about getting your head around all those texts. So, make sure you go check them out. But now if you're good to go, let's go.

TESTAMENT: In this episode we're comparing two poems, 'The Emigrée' by Carol Rumens and 'Tissue' by Imtiaz Dharker. We're going to tell you a bit about each poem, and we're gonna compare three key points: The theme of identity and conflict, the language – both use light and sunlight imagery – and the context.

And guess what, I'm joined by Imtiaz Dharker, the poet herself, so you know this episode is gonna be worth your time. Imtiaz, hello.

IMTIAZ: Hello Testament.

TESTAMENT: Imtiaz, tell us a bit about your poem first. We've got all this paper, important paper like maps, but also paper that seems unimportant like shopping lists. What would you say the poem is about.

IMTIAZ: I was just exploring the idea of what causes arguments and how to resolve them. And whether there was any way to avoid conflict that comes from political differences or religious differences or, differences about how you're going to live or what your identity is. All of these are things that people fight over.

TESTAMENT: So, the title 'Tissue', it seems to have a double meaning here. Paper but also it can mean skin as well, is that right?

IMTIAZ: I began to think about the fragile tissue, like the fine slips of grocery shops, which are part of everyday life. And we ignore all those everyday parts of life as if they don't matter. We throw them away, all the bits of tissue. I move on from that by the end of the poem to human skin, and how that is thrown away in times of conflict, in times of war.Human tissue, human skin, is treated as if it's something that doesn't matter.

TESTAMENT: So, you're layer by layer taking us from tissue meaning paper to something really real and I guess more important, which is skin.

IMTIAZ: And I move towards you, your skin. This isn't an impersonal thing, I'm talking about us.

TESTAMENT: So, let's talk about 'The Emigrée' by Carol Rumens. In that poem the speaker's remembering the country that they left as a child, and they've got this really clear vivid strong memory of the place. But they can't go back now because it's a country in the grip of war.

IMTIAZ: I love this poem. Carol Rumens is talking about the country that's been left behind. And there's a whole feeling of longing there in that idea of something left behind but, what does she remember? I left it as a child but my memory of it is sunlight clear.

TESTAMENT: So, for our first key point we're thinking about identity and conflict. In 'The Emigrée' Carol Rumens is writing here in the first person, so writing from the perspective of an emigree, someone who's left their country. She writes, “I have no passport”, what does this tell us?

IMTIAZ: For someone who's come from a place where there is conflict there is huge instability in having no passport.

TESTAMENT: Mm, it's a simple statement but it's so powerful. It's using an absence of a document to say that you can't return to that place, but also you haven't got a clear identity anymore. Let's turn back to your poem Imtiaz, 'Tissue', because there's so many details and meanings there. Can you read your first stanza for us?

IMTIAZ: "Paper that lets the light shine through, this is what could alter things. Paper thinned by age or touching".

TESTAMENT: I love the line, “Paper thinned” by age or touching, ah, what do you want the reader to think about there?

IMTIAZ: What is the thing a person wants? To be paid attention to. When you pay attention to it you may be touching, you're looking at it. And I'm also suggesting that it's something like skin as well, because skin thins with age or touching, skin is a thin and delicate thing.

TESTAMENT: Okay Imtiaz, so the next key point we're gonna focus on is the language that you and Carol Rumens have chosen in your poems. Here in both poems, we've got light imagery. Each stanza in Carol Rumen's poem ends with the word sunlight. What does that do?

IMTIAZ: It gives emphasis, but also the feeling of return. When you come back to the word it's like almost as if she's returning to the country that she's lost.

TESTAMENT: What a great poetic device repetition is. When a poet repeats something, something is going on and it's worth looking at. And your poem 'Tissue' Imtiaz we've got this other quote that relates to sunlight. Ah, you write, "sun shines through the borderlines". What are you saying with this line?

IMTIAZ: The light is literally shining through, breaking through the barriers and the maps and the borderlines. Breaking through all the things that can separate people, that they find to use to separate themselves from each other. So, the light is a kind of hope.

TESTAMENT: And for our final key comparison we're gonna think a little bit more about the context that these poems were written in. Carol Rumens is British, she's from London. People writing about her poems have often noticed that she writes about the idea of elsewhere. Can we talk about that for a bit, what is writing about elsewhere?

IMTIAZ: I think all of us have a history, an idea of something left behind. Very often that thing left behind is the thing that people see as their identity, as their real identity.

TESTAMENT: This is not autobiographical even though she's written it in the first person.

IMTIAZ: Poets do that all the time. You use the I and you can take on the voices of other people and have dramatic monologues and be someone totally different. That's the beauty of imagination and words and making things up. Very often the reader thinks the I is the poet. It doesn't have to be.

TESTAMENT: That's fantastic. So this is a first-person poem, it's a dramatic monologue. If we want to back that up in our exam we can use the quote, "I. I left as a child, I have no passport". I like the way that, although that it's first person which makes it feel personal and specific, she never actually names a country or the city where the emigrée is coming from.

So really it could be applied for anybody fleeing a war zone or thinking about refugees, it's kind of general. You yourself have experience of living in different countries, don't you? Did you bring any of that history to 'Tissue'?

IMTIAZ: Yes, I always say that I don't want to be put in a box or labelled. So there's always that trying to break out of things, trying to break out of ideas that people have of what your identity is. The assumption that you are certain things because you look a certain way, or sound a certain way.

TESTAMENT: So, we're thinking about conflict, which applies to both poems. And borders come up in both poems, leaving countries is crossing a border, and you directly refer to borderlines. What do you want to say about borders?

IMTIAZ: For me the borders are the – the thing that people can use very often as a symbol of separation. And being able to pass through that, being able to let the sunlight break through that, is a way of dealing with, ah, the whole complex city of borders.

TESTAMENT: Let's wrap things up, and let's go over the quotes one more time. Imtiaz in your poem 'Tissue' we've got all this paper, paper that constructs meaning and identity, our lives. But identity isn't stable, ah, it changes as it goes through our lives and we can peel off the layers through each stanza. And we've got a really great quote about paper here. And the line is, "Paper thinned by age or touching".
In 'The Emigrée' we have a missing document, something telling us about place and identity and belonging – "I have no passport". 'The Emigrée' is a first-person poem, and there's a really easy quote to back that up, it's just the word 'I'. Both have the imagery of sunlight, sunlight gives us hope. What's the word that ends every stanza in ‘The Emigrée’?

IMTIAZ: Sunlight.

TESTAMENT: Yep sunlight. And in your poem we also have, please give us the line.

IMTIAZ: "The sun shines through their borderlines".

TESTAMENT: Thank you, Imtiaz for helping the sun shine through. Showing us all the ways poets use language and imagery to create meaning and emotion in us. And thank you for listening to this Bitesize Poetry Podcast. Remember there's more about the poems we've talked about today on the Bitesize website. There are loads more Bitesize revision podcasts you should check out. And you can search Bitesize on BBC Sounds.

ANNOUNCER: BBC Sounds: music, radio, podcasts.

TESTAMENT: Ey! Hello and welcome to the Bitesize poetry podcast. I'm Testament, a writer, rapper and poet, and in this series, I'll be comparing poems, looking at language, form, structure, theme and context – some of the things you'll need to know for your exam. Make sure you've got a pen to make notes 'cause I'm gonna be giving you some really good quotes to use. And if you haven't listened to the first three episodes in this series, you really should. Well, if you're good to go, let's go.

TESTAMENT: In this episode we're comparing 'Neutral Tones' by Victorian writer Thomas Hardy with 'Winter Swans' by Owen Sheers, a contemporary writer who lives in Wales. And you know what? We're gonna meet Owen Sheers right now himself. Yo, Owen, how are you?

OWEN: Hey, Testament. I'm really good and very happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

TESTAMENT: Pleasure. Remember, there's more about these poems on the Bitesize website. It might help you to have that open as you listen. We're going to take you through three key points that will help you compare these poems: the theme of complicated relationships; the colour imagery that they both use; and the endings, particularly with how it affects the tone or mood. Owen, easy question to kick us off. What happens in your poem, 'Winter Swans'?

OWEN: So, this poem takes place just after a couple have had an argument. It's been a really wet day and they take the opportunity of a break in the rain to go for a walk around the lake. But hopefully you can tell there's a lot of tension still between them. But while they're there they see these two swans who appear to act and move in unison, almost as one. And it's this moment of a connection with the natural world that starts to lead them down a path towards forgiveness.

TESTAMENT: In Hardy's poem the narrator thinks back to a time when they stood with someone and realised that the love they had for them was now gone. So we've got the memory of that sad moment, as well as, in the last stanza, how they feel about what has happened since then. Now, Thomas Hardy wrote 'Neutral Tones' in 1867 but it's still so relevant today. Some things don't change. You know, relationships are hard work.

OWEN: Absolutely. I think that's what's so extraordinary about this poem. Anyone who's been in a relationship and felt that sense of love or that connection ebb away I think can really find a connection in this poem.

TESTAMENT: So, for our first key point, this theme of complicated relationships, Owen, can you read from the beginning of your poem?

OWEN: "The clouds had given their all. Two days of rain and then a break in which we walked."

TESTAMENT: Let's talk about that first line: "The clouds had given their all." What are you doing with this line?

OWEN: There's a sense that the clouds are also the people in this poem. You know, that sense of giving their all, I hope it's doing many things at once. Firstly, it's suggesting that there's been a really fierce downpour – this isn't just a drizzle. And the ferocity of that weather, it gives you a sense later in the poem of perhaps just how bad this argument has been.

TESTAMENT: Mmmm.

OWEN: But also, "giving their all", I wanted to have a sense of exhaustion, of feeling drained. You know, are we at the end of something here?

TESTAMENT: So the clouds are a metaphor for the people and what they've been through and how they're feeling. This is pathetic fallacy, when the nature and the weather reflects the emotions in a poem. And it's a really good thing to write about. So, write down the quote: "The clouds had given their all." Now I'm gonna read two lines from 'Neutral Tones'. 'The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing, alive enough to have strength to die.' Wow. What a line. This is harsh, isn't it? We've got "smile" contrasted with "deadest"; "alive" contrasted with "die".

OWEN: It's a great line. It cuts straight to the heart, doesn't it? And you're right, it's about that putting together of those really contrasting ideas: "smile," "the deadest thing," but then just this idea that it was "alive enough to have strength to die." So it's a couple of lines that is full of the sense of endings, which of course is what this poem is about.

TESTAMENT: Our next key point is the imagery. And here it's colour, or perhaps lack of colour. In your poem, Owen, we've got these clouds from the first line: they're kind of grey and colourless to me. But there's also the great quote: you call the swans "icebergs of white feather." Tell us about that.

OWEN: I wanted to describe the swans in that way because they've got their heads under the water, so they're tipped up, you know, so they literally sort of look like icebergs. But it's that whiteness, that purity of the whiteness of swans. There's also the idea of icebergs, 'cause we all know icebergs have a lot more of themselves under the water and we just see the tip. So I kind of wanted that to be in the background as well, this idea that there's a lot going on under the surface here.

TESTAMENT: So the swans here are metaphors for what's going on with the couple here as well. And in Thomas Hardy's poem, 'Neutral Tones', we've got white and grey in the first stanza. When used together this descriptive colour language really builds a picture of not just emotion, but a sense of hopelessness.

OWEN: Yeah, it feels really sort of bleached-out, doesn't it? It's interesting 'cause it shows how you use white can really change in a poem. So in the "Swans" you feel that brightness of the white, but if the sun is white, and not yellow or orange, then you can sort of tell it's kind of probably shining through lots of grey clouds. And then something else that's fascinating for me is, you know, those leaves. They've fallen from an ash. So that's an ash tree. But because of the name "ash", in our minds you immediately see something else that's grey.

TESTAMENT: Yeah.

OWEN: So Hardy's really sort of piling up these, well, these neutral colours, these neutral tones and this sense of greyness.

TESTAMENT: Let's get to our final key point: the endings of these poems. Remember that all the things a poem does with form and structure and language, they all combine to make an effect. And where a poet chooses to end, where they want to finish the poem, is always really important. Now, this is where these poems differ, because in your poem, Owen, there's actually a bit of hope. Can you read the final lines for us?

OWEN: "I noticed our hands, that had, somehow, swum the distance between us and folded, one over the other, like a pair of wings settling after flight."

TESTAMENT: That's such a beautiful moment of hope to end the poem on, Owen. So we've had this couple who've not really been getting on, they are "silent and apart" – that's a quote from earlier on in the poem – but then they see the swans, these symbols of love who mate for life, and somehow it brings the couple together, reminding them of what they have, their sense of stillness and togetherness, and their hands become wings?

OWEN: Yeah, that's right. I guess I wanted there to be lots of different kinds of coming together at the end of this poem. But it's also about the images in the poem coming together, because those hands are also the wings, and then there's this idea of wings sort of settling after flight; the possibility of flight, of separation, of leaving is over now.

TESTAMENT: That last line is a great quote: "Like a pair of wings settling after flight." But it's not ending so well for the couple in 'Neutral Tones', is it? Just looking at that last stanza, we've got so many great but pretty bleak quotes that show us that the love is over, it's dead. "Love deceives." Ouch. "Wrings with wrong." That's some great alliteration there. And "God curst son." What does that mean?

OWEN: It really emphasises the hopelessness at the end of this poem, because if even the sun is "curst" by God, something's gone pretty terribly wrong here.

TESTAMENT: So, before we go, let's go over some key points. Both poems are about the complications in long-term relationships, and both focus on a memory of a couple by the water in winter. In 'Winter Swans', though, you start us with a metaphor for the troubled couple.

OWEN: "The clouds had given their all."

TESTAMENT: And in 'Neutral Tones' by Thomas Hardy, what does the speaker see on their partner's face? A smile that is…?

OWEN: "Alive enough to have strength to die."

TESTAMENT: Ouch. That's right!

OWEN: Mmm.

TESTAMENT: And both poems use imagery to create different emotions, particularly colour imagery. In your poem we have…?

OWEN: "Icebergs of white feather."

TESTAMENT: This bright, shining image that gives the couple some hope. Wow. In 'Neutral Tones' we've got two colour words: white – used differently here – and grey. And also…?

OWEN: Ash.

TESTAMENT: Ash. So, finally, the ending. 'Neutral Tones' – oh, man, this-, this ending is bleak, but it's a really good quote: "God curst son." So powerful. But let's end with hope. The last line of your poem, 'Winter Swans', Owen. We've got hands that are like…?

OWEN: "Like a pair of wings settling after flight."

TESTAMENT: Right, well, thank you, Owen, for giving us hope. And thank you so much for listening to this Bitesize poetry podcast. Check out the rest of the episodes in the series, or, for the rest of the Bitesize podcasts, search Bitesize on BBC Sounds. Peace.

ANNOUNCER: BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

TESTAMENT: Hello and welcome to the Bitesize Poetry Podcast, I'm Testament, I'm a writer, rapper and poet, and your host for this series. I'm all about helping you get to grips with the poems you're studying for your GCSE English Literature.

In these episodes I'll be comparing two poems, and you can listen to the first three episodes in this series where we cover the basics.

Make sure you've got a pen to make notes, because I'm gonna be giving you loads of really good quotes for you to use, let's go.

TESTAMENT: In this episode we're comparing ‘Walking Away’ by Cecil Day-Lewis and ‘Climbing my Grandfather’ by Andrew Waterhouse, and my guest is the brilliant poet Caroline Bird. Yo Caroline walking, climbing, are you ready to get moving?

CAROLINE: Yes, let's do it.

TESTAMENT: Alright, we're gonna talk through three key points that will help you compare these poems. One, perspective. In ‘Walking Away’ with have an adult thinking about a child, and in ‘Climbing my Grandfather’ we have someone who is really small perhaps someone remembering being a child looking at their grandfather. Secondly, tense. ‘Walking Away’ is written in the past tense, while ‘Climbing my Grandfather’ is present tense.And third and finally, imagery. Both these poems contain nature imagery. We're also going to give you the quotes to back up your answers.

TESTAMENT: Both these poems are about family relationships and memories, Caroline can you briefly tell us about the poem, what happens in ‘Climbing my Grandfather’?

CAROLINE: Okay, the speaker of the poem, he climbs up his grandfather and his grandfather is like a mountain, and he is doing it without a rope or a net and he's climbing from the shirt to the shoulder to the forehead, all the way up to the top of his head.

And then in ‘Walking Away’, it sounds a lot less dramatic it's a parent watching a child play football, and then watching their child walk back to school.

And you think well that doesn't sound like very much happens in that, but actually it does because it zooms in to the feeling.

TESTAMENT: Kid is playing football, he's walking around with his friends. He's not rushing over to his dad, he's choosing to walk with his friends instead –

CAROLINE: Yes, yes.

TESTAMENT: – devastated, devo.

TESTAMENT: Our first key point of comparison is perspective. They are both written in the first person. That means they're from the point of view of the narrator. In ‘Walking Away’, it's an adult.

CAROLINE: No and it's a perspective we don't often read about, a parent's fear, not of losing their child in a tragic way, but of just losing their child to growing up.

TESTAMENT: A great quote about what this poem says about relationships is the last line, Love is proved in the letting go. So this means that part of loving a child is accepting that they will grow up and they'll make their own choices, and they won't need you so much.

CAROLINE: The hardest part of this quote is the middle bit, And love is proved in the letting go. I would focus on remembering that middle, love is proved in the letting go, we're not just loving them and letting them go, we are proving our love to them by letting them go.

TESTAMENT: There's that viral meme, [sings] if you love me let me go, but you don't –

CAROLINE: Yeah you see, but you don't want to remember that.

TESTAMENT: But you don't – no but you want to remember it cos you've got love letting go but you've got to remember oh it's a remix so the word prove is in there –

CAROLINE: Remix, perfect.

TESTAMENT: – love is proved in the letting go. and let's compare that to ‘Climbing my Grandfather’, let's look at the last line here too, “the slow pulse of his good heart”. Climbed the mountain that is his grandfather, and he's found love?

CAROLINE: So you're climbing up the vast mountain of the grandfather's memory, but you've got these lines, you've got to think about them in context right, Reaching for the summit where gasping for breath I can only lie watching clouds and birds circle – we want to be able to reach a conclusion right about the people we love but, love is much more vast and mysterious than that. It's as vast and mysterious as nature, and actually he gets to the top of his granddad, has he concluded anything? No. All he can do is suddenly appreciate the world.

TESTAMENT: Our next comparison is looking at tense. ‘Walking Away’ is written in the past tense, while ‘Climbing my Grandfather’ is written in the present tense. Caroline, what do those tenses do in those poems?

CAROLINE: ‘Walking Away’ it makes sense is written in the past tense about something that happened 18 years ago that they're trying to grasp and recount. ‘Climbing my Grandfather’ is present tense, I decide to do it free without a rope or net, it starts at the beginning, which –

TESTAMENT: It's happening now isn't it?

CAROLINE: – hap- it's happening right now, and that creates a danger, we don't know whether or not they're gonna climb their grandfather and fall to their death right, whether they're gonna reach the top, what's gonna happen and, but it also makes an innocence and a childlikeness – look, look, look what I'm doing right now, look at me.

TESTAMENT: In ‘Walking Away’, the speaker is talking to his son directly using 'you', whereas in ‘Climbing my Grandfather’ the grandfather is referred to as 'his', his fingers, his neck and so on. What does that tell us about the relationships in each of the poems?

CAROLINE: There is a, a directness and a – an intimacy of, I can see you walking away from me towards the school, even though we know now he's speaking to an adult but he's saying, I can still see you as that little boy.

TESTAMENT: That's lovely, and then let's contrast that with ‘Climbing my Grandfather’ so, here we've got his fingers, his neck, what's that doing to us in the poem?

CAROLINE: Well, it makes him more unknowable. The poem's full of love but it's also full of distance, like it's a massive distance from the grandfather's feet, his brogues, to his head, you think about our relationships with relatives, you will have relatives that you love but feel far away from you.

TESTAMENT: Finally, we're gonna talk about imagery. When you read a poem always look out for what kind of language you can see there. So here in both poems we've got nature imagery. Let's talk about the line in ‘Climbing my Grandfather’, “Watching clouds and birds circle”, what does this line say to you, Caroline?

CAROLINE: I mean it's a moment of peace and beauty, but it's also a moment about vastness and the nobleness of nature right. It could mean, oh I've reached the top of my granddad and I know him and I can relax now, could mean that. It could mean I've reached the top of my granddad and I know nothing, and I'm just exhausted, and it could mean my granddad has taught me to appreciate the world.How does it make you feel when you read it what – what about you?

TESTAMENT: Yeah I think it's okay to say that a line can have multiple meanings, you know. Okay let's pair that quote with one from ‘Walking Away’, Like a winged seed loosened from its parent's stem. What's a winged seed?

CAROLINE: Have you seen those? They're these seeds that look like they've got little wings right, and they're built like that on purpose so that the wind will pick up the seed and toss it somewhere else so it can grow somewhere else, and nature has deliberately designed it that way to make it easier for the wind to disperse it. Think about children, they have to be dispersed by the wind, you know, you don't want them living in your house forever, they have to grow up, they are designed like winged seeds one day they are going to plant elsewhere.

TESTAMENT: I mean nature here is definitely a metaphor again for the relationship between these two relatives [CAROLINE: Yeah.], like a winged seed, lovely simile –

TESTAMENT: Before we wrap up let's recap that once more, if you haven't already grab a pen and write down these quotes. So, we've got two poems about family relationships, love, memory, trying to know someone and letting someone go. In ‘Walking Away’ we've got the line –

CAROLINE: And love is proved in the letting go.

TESTAMENT: And the last line of ‘Climbing my Grandfather’ is –

CAROLINE: A slow pulse of his good heart.

TESTAMENT: And remember to pay attention to perspective, in ‘Walking Away’ we have –

CAROLINE: Past tense.

TESTAMENT: And in ‘Climbing my Grandfather’ –

CAROLINE: It's present tense.

TESTAMENT: In ‘Climbing my Grandfather’ the speaker talks about the subject in a more distant and novel way as 'his', whereas in ‘Walking Away’ the poem speaks directly and more intimately to –

CAROLINE: You.

TESTAMENT: And finally both poems have nature imagery, and what does it say in ‘Climbing my Grandfather’?

CAROLINE: Watching clouds and birds circle.

TESTAMENT: And in ‘Walking Away’ –

CAROLINE: Like a winged seed loosened from its parent's stem.

TESTAMENT: Thank you Caroline, and thank you so much for listening to this Bitesize Poetry Podcast. Remember to check out the first three episodes where Caroline and I give you loads of tips to help you talk about poetry, and there's more on the Bitesize website. To check out other episodes in this series, or the rest of the Bitesize Podcast, search Bitesize on BBC Sounds. You got this.

ANNOUNCER: BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.

TESTAMENT: Welcome to the Bitesize Poetry Podcast. I'm Testament a writer, rapper and poet. And in this series I'll be comparing poems and looking at language, form, structure, theme and context. Make sure you've got a pen to make notes because I'm gonna be giving you some really good quotes to use. And if you haven't listened to the first three episodes in this series you really should.

There’s some super useful tips to analyse poetry, and make you feel more confident about getting your head around all those texts, and some of the best approaches. So if you're good to go, let's go.

TESTAMENT: In this episode we're comparing two poems, 'Like an Heiress' by Grace Nichols and 'Thirteen' by Caleb Femi. We're gonna talk about what happens in the poems, and we're going to look at three key points of comparison. One, the theme, which is the differences between expectation and reality. Two, the wider social issues that the poems touch on, the climate and racism. And three, a bit about the form of each poem.
To help us to do this I'm joined by the amazing poet and writer Dean Atta, Dean you good?

DEAN: Yeah I'm really good.

TESTAMENT: Cool let's get into it. We're gonna start with 'Thirteen' by Caleb Femi. In this poem we have a young boy who is cornered by police officers who tell him that he fits the description of a man wanted for a robbery. But he's not a man, he's a boy, and he tells the police that he's –

DEAN: That he's 13 so, you know, just like the title he's not actually a man but he's being treated like a man.

TESTAMENT: And we're gonna be taking a look at 'Like an Heiress' by Grace Nichols. The speaker of that poem feels drawn back to the place she grew up. This is the Atlantic Ocean and Grace Nichols herself grew up in Guyana which is on the Atlantic. But what happens when she gets there?

DEAN: Well it's not really the way she remembers it being when she was a little girl, when she was living there. Rubbish everywhere, it's like become the world's rubbish tip.

TESTAMENT: Okay, now our first point of comparison. Let's look at what both poems do with the theme the gap between expectation and reality. In both poems the expectation belongs to a child. We've got this boy stopped by the police, meanwhile the boy remembers this police officer, this police officer came to give a talk at his primary school.

So that would be a time when the police were friendly, and they've gone into the school to tell children that they can be anything that they want to be. There's actually a really good quote here about this. That same police officer who now thinks that he's a criminal we hear that he said, you know, these children could be, here's the quote, "The biggest and brightest stars".

DEAN: That is such a wonderful thing to say to a child. Biggest brightest the super nova, and the word that's repeated in this poem, the super nova. You know, it has the word super in it so it kind of makes you feel like I'm gonna be super. When he meets this same person again he's being treated with suspicion, he's being treated as if he may have done something wrong. And as if he is an adult and not a boy which he still is. A 13-year-old is still a boy. It must really hurt, I feel like that must really hurt the speaker of this poem.

TESTAMENT: The biggest and brightest stars. Well there's alliteration there, biggest and brightest, the repetition of the b sound b, b. The biggest brightest stars versus how it actually makes the speaker of the poem feel, becoming black holes. So these two lines are great thematic bookends to the poem. And this is an extended, metaphor meaning the metaphor repeats and develops throughout the poem.

DEAN: Yes.

TESTAMENT: Okay so let's look at 'Like an Heiress' now. So the first line of this poem is the same as the title, Like an Heiress. What does that mean Dean?

DEAN: Heiress being someone that's gonna inherit something, and heiress is for a female so if it were a male it would be heir. So it lets us know that the speaker is a woman. And the fact that it's, like an heiress. But that's a simile so there's not necessarily this kind of like inheritance of loads of money or a castle or something like that.

TESTAMENT: But the contrast is later on in the poem actually she feels, quote, "like a tourist".

DEAN: Yeah. I think they're great lines to pull out and compare cos we've got the like a, like a. It says the heiress kind of has a sense of entitlement. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I actually mean it in like, you know, you've lived your life expecting something good to come. And then a tourist is a passing person that comes and goes.

And when you're a tourist you pay for your holiday. You go and you do your thing, you buy your trinkets, and you go back home, wherever home is.

TESTAMENT: Like if an heiress is in a palace you would probably assume that the heiress owns the palace or they're going to own the palace. Where if a tourist goes to a palace it's like oh you're just gonna go there, take some photos. [D: Exactly.] You don't belong there. [D: No.] You're just visiting.

DEAN: But yeah and a tourist doesn't have to care for somewhere in the same way that the person, the owner, or the local person would have to, um, take care of somewhere.

TESTAMENT: Let's look at our second key comparison. Both these poems use a personal story to shine a light on a wider societal problem, global issues really. Pollution in 'Like an Heiress', and racism in ‘Thirteen’. So in ‘Thirteen’ we have an example of structural or institutional racism.

That means that there's an organisation or an institution that has got racism going on, embedded in it. So I want to talk about stop and search cos this stop and search is a power that the police have to stop you and to search you if they suspect a crime has taken place. And unfortunately this happens disproportionately to black people.

DEAN: Yeah I mean growing up I saw that happen a lot to my friends when I was at school. So, a lot of my, you know, group of friends were black boys, and they would regularly get stopped, you know, even when we were in school uniform. And it would get people really riled up and, because if it happens to you over and over again it's not always about that single incident, it's the fact that it's happened many times.

Whereas I think in this poem it's maybe the first time it's happening to the speaker of this poem so it's actually the shock of it.

TESTAMENT: I grew up in Manchester, and I was stopped on my own street just walking down my own street. And that was a bit of a shock to me as well because, normally if I – if I'm having an interaction with the police officer I might be asking them for directions something like that. But then to be stopped and viewed suspiciously, ah, it was not pleasant. And it's something that statistically is much more likely to happen to people of dark skin.

Caleb Femi is writing this based in London, where there have been a number of reports which have come out and said, actually the police force here have got a problem with racism and they need to sort it out. Okay you're gonna need a quote, here's a simple one but I think it's a good one, "Cornered by an officer". Because it gives us that sense of being trapped.

And let's turn to 'Like an Heiress'. So she gets back to the Atlantic, to this beach, to the sea. And it's not what she remembers, it's polluted. There's a quote, "Wave of rubbish", let's talk about this image.

DEAN: What the poet then does is, using the rule of three, so having used car tyres, plastic bottles and Styrofoam cups gives us some concrete things to hold onto –

TESTAMENT: What's the rule of three?

DEAN: Repeating, using three things, doing things three times. That is enough so that we remember it, and not too much that we kind of like lose track of it.

TESTAMENT: Finally I want to talk about form. Both poems use free verse. What's free verse Dean, what does it do?

DEAN: It does what it wants. [laughs] No, free verse doesn't follow any strict rhyme scheme, it can have any number of lines and, yeah the lines can be as long and short as you want them to be as well. So free verse is completely free.

TESTAMENT: [overlap] And does it rhyme?

DEAN: No, it wouldn't usually rhyme, or it wouldn't have to rhyme. And if it does rhyme it's not in any strict pattern.

TESTAMENT: So why do you think Caleb Femi uses free verse in ‘Thirteen’?

DEAN: Cos I think it's a time when you're young of possibility, of openness, of new experiences. So you're not set in your final form as a person, you're still growing, you're still figuring yourself out.

TESTAMENT: So 'Like an Heiress' is interesting, cos although it uses free verse it actually starts with iambic pentameter. This is ten syllables a line and those of you who study Shakespeare will recognise it a dadum, dadum, dadum. But the poem doesn't stay in iambic pentameter. It changes to free verse. Why do you think Grace Nichols is doing that?

DEAN: I think she does that to show there was a certain expectation and it hasn't been met. So it starts off a certain way and you think, you may think it's gonna carry on that way. And it has a shadow or a ghost of the sonnet in there because it also has 14 lines and so –

TESTAMENT: [overlap] Oh cos a sonnet has 14 lines right?

DEAN: – a sonnet has 14 lines so, there is still that kind of unmet expectation of like it being a Shakespearian or an old-style sonnet. But we don't get our expectations met, like the speaker of the poem has had her expectations dashed to the sea.

TESTAMENT: So before we go let's recap what we've learned and go over the quotes. We've got two poems about very different experiences, but they both share the theme of disappointment. In 'Like an Heiress' the speaker realises she is –

DEAN: "Like a tourist".

TESTAMENT: And in ‘Thirteen’ a boy finds out he is not –

DEAN: "The biggest and brightest stars".

TESTAMENT: In fact he and boys like him are "becoming black holes". Both poems use personal stories to reveal something about why they're societal issues. In 'Like an Heiress' we have environmental destruction, as shown by the line –

DEAN: "Wave of rubbish".

TESTAMENT: And in Caleb Femi's poem ‘Thirteen’ we have a powerful image of structural racism, as the boy is –

DEAN: "Cornered by an officer".

TESTAMENT: And finally remember to talk about form. Both poems use free verse, but 'Like an Heiress' starts with iambic pentameter and then breaks away from it.

TESTAMENT: Dean! Oh thank you so much for talking to us and helping us show that poetry can be a mirror that we can hold up to society. What we expect versus some ugly realities. Perhaps poems like these can show us we can change for good.

TESTAMENT: Remember to check out the Bitesize website for more information on the poems you're studying for your GCSE. Thank you so much for listening to the Bitesize Poetry Podcast, the rest of this series is available now on BBC Sounds. Peace.

ANNOUNCER: BBC Sounds: music, radio, podcasts.

TESTAMENT: Hello and welcome to the Bitesize poetry podcast. I'm Testament, a writer, rapper and poet. In this series I'm gonna tell you how to write about poetry in your exam. It's a good idea to start at the beginning and listen to the first three episodes in this series, so make sure you check those out. In this episode I'm comparing two poems. Make sure you've got a pen handy because it's really useful to make some notes and write down some quotes as we go.

TESTAMENT: We're talking about 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' by Alfred Lord Tennyson and 'Poppies' by Jane Weir. Victorian poet Tennyson wrote 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' in 1854, so he's not around to answer my questions. But luckily Jane Weir is here with me to talk to you about her beautiful poem 'Poppies'. Hello, Jane.

JANE: Hi, Testament.

TESTAMENT: We're going to talk about three key points today: context – when and why the poems were written; form – how they are written; and theme – remembering those who were lost. While these poems are about commemorating, honouring, and remembering those who've died in war, they're very different. We'll start with ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’. Like I said, it's written in 1854. What's it about? Jane?

JANE: It's about a group of men riding into battle during the Crimean War. And it concentrates on the men and how they carried out their orders regardless of any kind of personal risk to themselves.

TESTAMENT: Right. So Tennyson wrote this to commemorate roughly six hundred men in battle in the Crimean War. And this battle was famously badly organised. It was a disaster. But Tennyson's point is that it doesn't stop these men being brave. I wanna turn now to your poem, Jane, 'Poppies'. Even though you wrote it, it's a bit more of a tricky question. What's happening in, in your poem?

JANE: Well, my poem isn't actually located in the battlefield like Tennyson's is. And it's about those people that are left behind. The child is remembered alive as well as possibly dead. That's important to say because you never really truly know in my poem. You could read the poem as a ghost poem or a premonition of a child's death. It's ambiguous.

TESTAMENT: That's an important point. Poems can be ambiguous. They can have more than one meaning or leave you with a feeling of uncertainty. So you the reader can decide what you think it's about. We want you to have your own opinions about poems, but you've always got to remember to back it up with a quote in the exam.

TESTAMENT: Okay, for our first key comparison, let's dig into the context a little more. Both these poems are about conflict and memory, and there's a really great quote you can use from 'The Charge of the Light Brigade'. This is a line from near the end of the poem, so it's a thought Tennyson wants to leave you with. And it says, "Honour the charge they made." It's like a command to the reader, isn't it? What do you think "honour" means here, Jane?

JANE: Er, meaning remember and respect. So for me when Tennyson talks of honour he's speaking of it in an impersonal way.

TESTAMENT: And if you can't remember the whole line, "Honour the charge they made," you can just remember the word "honour". Write it down, underline it, because honour is so central to this poem. Thinking about memory, Jane, your poem is called 'Poppies', and we wear poppies to honour and remember. Jane, is there a quote from your poem 'Poppies' that you'd like to talk about?

JANE: "I traced the inscriptions on the war memorial, leaned against it like a wishbone." I think that's a way of thinking about the dead, recording them in some way. I mean, it's an intimate moment for the mother. She walks up through the graveyard and she stands against – I call it the wishbone, which is specifically the war memorial, which often kind of looks like a wishbone if you-, if you know what one looks like.

TESTAMENT: What is a wishbone, for those who don't know?

JANE: You know when you get a chicken carcass? It sounds a bit bizarre.

TESTAMENT: It's like a roast chicken, yeah.

JANE: It's like a roast chicken. And you get that little bone at the back of it. We always used to take it out, pick it clean, and then I'd hold one end of it and my mum would hold the other, and then we'd pull on it and make a wish. And the wish in my poem is wishing the child back.

TESTAMENT: With multiple meanings.

JANE: Yeah.

TESTAMENT: So it looks like a wishbone. Also it-, it conjures up and it creates that image of pulling on a wishbone, a chicken bone, and making a wish for something better.

JANE: That's right. And it's an intimate act, something that connects people.

TESTAMENT: Okay, so now we've got some context we're now going to compare the form of these poems. Jane, your poem is a dramatic monologue. That means it's a poem where a character – the speaker – tells their story. Why did you choose this form?

JANE: I think dramatic monologues are… are brilliant because they're very, very direct and immediate, and you feel sometimes that you're actually completely inside the person or the character's head, and you can use a lot of creativity and play around with language and imagery and metaphor. So all those things are used in the line like, "I resisted the impulse to run my fingers through the gelled blackthorns of your hair." It's a sort of simple, tender act of play and love.

TESTAMENT: That's a really powerful one. I'm gonna repeat the quote again. "I resisted the impulse to run my fingers through the gelled blackthorns of your hair." Now, 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' is a ballade. A ballade is a really old poetic form and it tells a story. So, often, like in this case, it's a story of a real-life event. They were often used to commemorate historically significant events.

The interesting thing about this poem is that it just happened. And he wants to give this recent event significance and weight. He wants it to go down in history? Also important is that the poem is in six stanzas. A stanza is a group of lines in a poem. These can change length as the story changes, as it does here: as the men go towards danger, the final stanza is only two lines long – a short, sharp conclusion.

TESTAMENT: And for our last key comparison, let's dig more into a key difference between these poems. They both share a theme of remembering those who've died at war. Jane, your poem 'Poppies' is much more personal. We hear the word "you", whereas in 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' they're written about as "the noble six hundred." It's a really useful quote, isn't it?

JANE: And Tennyson repeats that: "the noble six hundred." I mean, I think he does it – in a weird way he's also trying to create maybe the sound of the battlefield? I think he's trying to create some kind of thunderous momentum in the poem.

TESTAMENT: With your poem, because it's so intimate we really feel that sense of loss that the mother has and what it means to her. There's no glorifying war here. There's a line in your poem, Jane, which I think shows this really well. Here it is. "Your playground voice." It's such a tender line.

JANE: A parent who loves and knows their child can often pick out their voice amongst a whole crowd in a playground. And I've tried to do that with the poem, to identify a single child out of a mass of other sounds and other voices, and to pick up on the softness of that. And I do that by using the language of textiles in my poems, both soft and hard textiles.

TESTAMENT: That's a massive contrast with ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ where we've got the sounds of canons and flashing sabres – you know, which is a type of sword.

JANE: The missiles and the canon and the shot, they're also very hard s-, are kind of symbols of violence.

TESTAMENT: Okay, so we can go through the poems and find language that shows us the contrast between them. In 'Poppies' we've got the soft textile language. Words like "lapel", "blazer" and "hair" all support this intimate feeling of "your playground voice."

JANE: Mmm.

TESTAMENT: And we can contrast this with the impersonal line in Tennyson's poem: "noble six hundred." If we look through that poem, there are lots of hard metal words. Remember, just a word can be a good quote. So, you can use "guns", "canon", "shell". But Tennyson's poem can sometimes be seen as using this grand impersonal language to show that these men were heroes. However, there could be room for ambiguity here too. The men might be brave and noble, but the war ought not to be.

TESTAMENT: Okay, so let's quickly run through what we've learnt today to wrap this all up. 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' is a ballade written to commemorate the "noble six hundred." Why? Because…?

JANE: Someone had blundered.

TESTAMENT: While 'Poppies' is a dramatic monologue in which the speaker of the poem is a parent thinking about a child. The language is soft and personal. Quote?

JANE: "Run my fingers through the gelled blackthorns of your hair."

TESTAMENT: 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' is about, quote, "honour", while in 'Poppies' we're thinking more about longing for one specific person. Can you give us a quote, Jane?

JANE: "Traced the inscriptions on the war memorial, leaned against it like a wishbone."

TESTAMENT: Jane, thanks so much. You really helped to show what poetry can do. We've got two poems that are about the same thing, about remembrance, but are so different because of the intent of the poet and the meaning that is made with language, image and form. Thanks so much for listening to the Bitesize poetry podcast. Remember, you can check out the rest of our podcasts, and you can subscribe now on BBC Sounds.

ANNOUNCER: BBC Sounds: music, radio, podcasts.

TESTAMENT: Hey! Welcome to the Bitesize poetry podcast. I'm Testament, a writer, rapper and poet, and your guide to this series. We'll be comparing poems and looking at language, form, structure, theme and context. Make sure you've got a pen to make notes because I'm gonna be giving you some really good quotes to use. And if you haven't listened to the first three episodes in this series, you really should. There we give you useful tips to analyse poetry. If you're good, let's go!

TESTAMENT: In this episode we're comparing 'Cozy Apologia' by Rita Dove and 'Living Space' by Imtiaz Dharker. And to help us do that – I can't believe it – we've got the acclaimed poet and writer of 'Living Space' herself, Imtiaz Dharker here with me. Hello!

IMTIAZ: Hello, Testament. I'm happy to be here.

TESTAMENT: Today we're gonna be looking at three key points: the style – the conversational tone both poems share; the language – both use the language of faith; and we're starting with theme, because these poems share a similar theme, which is happiness or hope in uncertain situations, or potentially dangerous situations. Both are about houses, or homes, but are they safe houses? Imtiaz, tell us about your poem 'Living Space'. It describes a makeshift place to live.

IMTIAZ: Yes, well, I was living in Mumbai in India and working with people who live in the huge migrant colony that's there at the edge of the city. And people have made places to live out of corrugated sheets and tarpaulin and things left over from other people's lives. It's a place that looks as if it's held up with sticks and string and scaffolding. And to me that began to look like an image of the whole world.

TESTAMENT: And you talk about this fragility in-, in this line, "These eggs in a wire basket." Did you actually see those-, those eggs?

IMTIAZ: I did. And in the middle of it all, in the darkness, there were these eggs, these beautiful, perfect eggs.

TESTAMENT: So this imagery is two things at once. It's a detail from something you actually saw in real life but it's also imagery as a metaphor for life continuing in these really difficult circumstances. In 'Cozy Apologia' by Rita Dove, the speaker of the poem is addressing someone that she loves – she's talking to her loved one. And they are inside in a house together, while outside a very real and dangerous hurricane is coming their way

IMTIAZ: The hurricane is on its way, and that's a threat of chaos. In my poem the chaos is there and it's permanent; in this poem it's a threat that's on its way.

TESTAMENT: So when we compare these poems we're looking at the idea that there is something positive, something joyful or hopeful, even if it's imperfect. Now, remember, you always need quotes to back-up your answers. I loved that line in your poem, Imtiaz, 'Living Space', where you end the first stanza and it says, "The whole structure leans dangerously towards the miraculous."

IMTIAZ: There's a… a double edge to all of these things. Yes, there's hope; there's also danger.

TESTAMENT: It's such a beautifully balanced line, 'cause on-, on one part of the line he's-, it's "leaning dangerously" and on the second part of the line it's "towards the miraculous". So you've got danger and then you've got this lovely miracle, this hope.

IMTIAZ: And actually, both of these poems are about a world that's off balance or about to go off balance.

TESTAMENT: Both writers here, yourself and Rita Dove, are using juxtaposition. And juxtaposition is deliberately placing together of words that have different feelings. And sometimes putting those things together creates a new feeling. It might be a good idea to pull out the words "dangerously" and "miraculous", or to write out that whole line, 'cause that is a really good key to unlocking what the poem is about.

Let's think about 'Cozy Apologia' by Rita Dove. So, this poem, it's a house. This is a different kind of house. Do you think it's a messy house? What kind of house is this?

IMTIAZ: It's a place where there's a kind of happy untidiness. But people have their places in it. "You're bunkered in your Aerie, I'm perched in mine." So they're comfortable in those spaces. Look at the title of this poem: 'Cozy Apologia'. I mean, it's almost as if she's laughing at herself for being contented. And she's saying, "Still, it's embarrassing, this happiness." You know, it's almost like how dare we be contented when the world is in a mess and there's a storm coming up and everything's the way it is. She's taking that storm but she's linking it up to the kind of storms of being young and a teenager. She's going back to that: "Brings a host of daydreams." And she remembers the bad boys, the "worthless boys", that she was involved with.

TESTAMENT: Right. So "Big Bad Floyd", this big storm, she's kind of belittling it by giving it a bit of a cheeky name. She even says that it's-, it's not driving up the coast of America, it's "nudging". So what's useful to know about this poem is that it's written about a specific hurricane – Hurricane Floyd – which damaged the east coast of the USA in 1999. People even died in the storm. But here the poet tries to make it less scary by calling it "Big Bad Floyd." That's a good quote. And also the line, "Today a hurricane is nudging up the coast." Who can be scared of a hurricane that's just nudging along?

TESTAMENT: Next we're going to talk about the style of the poems, because something else they both share is tone. Here the tone is conversational. Imtiaz, one of the things I love about this poem is that it sounds like we're just chatting. Quote: "There are just not enough straight lines. That is the problem." It just sounds like you're chatting to someone over a cup of tea, doesn't it?

IMTIAZ: Exactly. How do I deal with this? How can I solve this?

TESTAMENT: In 'Cozy Apologia' the speaker is addressing their partner, and then through the poem we get all these details that seem to say that this is a relationship that has been there for a while, for a long time. So this is a comfortable – or, like the title says, a "cozy" relationship. So it's conversational because she's talking to someone she's cozy with. Imtiaz, let's have a look at the penultimate line, the line before last, which is, "To keep me from melancholy," brackets, "[call it the blues]." I like how she puts "call it the blues" in brackets, like it's a-, a cheeky personal joke? It's almost like it's not said out loud but it's almost in private between her and her lover.

IMTIAZ: Yes. Well, there's a tone right through the poem of almost humorous, you know?

TESTAMENT: Mmm.

IMTIAZ: A laughing at herself, laughing at themselves, laughing at this embarrassing happiness they have. And so when she says "melancholy [call it the blues]" it's almost like a-, a private joke, a conversation between the two of them.

TESTAMENT: So, if you were writing about this conversational tone you could include the quote from 'Living Space': 'That is the problem.' And from 'Cozy Apologia' you could use the line, in brackets: '[call it the blues]'.

TESTAMENT: For our final point, let's talk about language. Both of the poems use the language of faith, of religion. Imtiaz, we've already said that your poem has the word "miraculous" in it, and also faith directly comes up because your poem even ends on the line "the bright, thin walls of faith." A beautiful line. "The bright, thin walls of faith." Why did you use those lines?

IMTIAZ: Again I was just thinking of how fragile this egg is and how fragile the hope is.

TESTAMENT: Mmm.

IMTIAZ: And I'm using faith in a very broad sense, not in a very, er, tightly religious sense of religious faith. I'm talking about the faith that gives people the hope to carry on.

TESTAMENT: Mmmmm. And turning to 'Cozy Apologia', we have the line: 'We're content, but fall short of the Divine.' So there's a language of faith there again.

IMTIAZ: Again she's not making huge claims for what they are. "We're content, but fall short of the Divine." She's not saying it's a perfect relationship, she's not claiming that their happiness is perfect.

TESTAMENT: Okay, so, before we go, let's recap what we've talked about today. We've got two poems that share the theme of happiness or hope in tricky situations. We've got two homes that aren't perfect. In 'Living Space', quote: 'There are just not enough straight lines. That is the problem.' And in 'Cozy Apologia' we have people 'bunkered' against the coming storm. Both poems share a conversational tone and quite direct language. 'Cozy Apologia' is addressed to you. And both use the language of faith. Imtiaz, how does your poem end?

IMTIAZ: "The bright, thin walls of faith."

TESTAMENT: Stunning. You've gotta file-save that one. And for our final quote, here's one from Rita Dove: "We're content, but fall short of the Divine."

TESTAMENT: Well, I'm feeling content, and I'm feeling confident you can pass your exam. Remember, you can listen again to help memorise those quotes. Thanks for listening to our BBC Bitesize podcast. There's loads more to help with your revision. Just search Bitesize on BBC Sounds. Bye. [brief fading-out of music]