Key Skills in English


Te purpose of a poem could be simply to entertain or amuse the reader e.g. ‘On the Ning Nang Nong’ by Spike Milligan.


On the Ning Nang Nong Where the Cows go Bong!


and the monkeys all say BOO!


Some poems are written to mock something or somebody. We call this latter type of poem a satire. Tese poems oſten use humour, exaggeration, or ridicule to criticise stupidity or evil e.g. Base Details by Siegfried Sassoon.


Poem and Sample Exam Questions (2)


Background: Te Great Famine, also referred to as ‘Te Great Hunger’, that lasted between 1845 and 1849 was one of the greatest disasters in Irish history. Many starving people tried to gain admission to workhouses which provided them with a small amount of food and clothing in return for hard labour. Unfortunately, diseases related to starvation spread quickly in the overcrowded workhouses and many people were either turned away or leſt the workhouse to avoid contracting disease.


Quarantine by Eavan Boland


In the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people a man set out from the workhouse with his wife. He was walking — they were both walking — north.


She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put her on his back. He walked like that west and west and north. Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.


In the morning they were both found dead. Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history. But her feet were held against his breastbone. The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.


Let no love poem ever come to this threshold. There is no place here for the inexact praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body. There is only time for this merciless inventory*:


Their death together in the winter of 1847. Also what they suffered. How they lived. And what there is between a man and woman. And in which darkness it can best be proved.


70


Quarantine = a place of isolation for people who may have been exposed to a contagious disease inventory = an itemised list


Unit 2: Poetry


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