“LEISURE CENTRE”-ANALYSIS AND NOTES

SUMMARY
- There are older women looking at a young woman in a changing room.
- Ideas about ageing and the physicality of it. Also, the inevitable future.
- The obliviousness and overindulgence in appearance of young women.
- The older personas are jealous and envious of the younger woman.
- The older personas are pitiful and concerned about the younger woman and how she will
eventually find out that physical looks will never permanently retain.
- The older personas show a condescending tone (common from older women to young women) in
a criticising manner where the older persona can be seen to forcing assumptions on the young
woman. Shows lack of unity between women.
- Alternative view: on the exterior she seems to be beautiful but on the interior she is alone and
craves affection that other people expect her to be getting.
ANALYSIS
“temple” – a place of worship; sacred and brings protection.
STANZA 1
“The honey coloured girl”- synaesthesia. Honey connotes to golden; rich; luxurious; sweetness; sun.
“absorbed in making her body more beautiful:”- “absorbed” how she is oblivious to everything around
her; the realities. Plosive alliteration gives a sense of spiteful tone.
“showered away the pool chemicals”- cleanliness.
“aromatic scrub and a gentle exfoliant.”- scrub and exfoliant are rough, imitates removal of all things
impure. Also, oxymoronic “gentle exfoliant” shows how she is not rough to harm her body but to take
care of it.
STANZA 2
“Lithe as a young leopard” – simile; lithe means thin and supple yet powerful. Physical attractiveness.
“her secret cleft is shaved as neatly as a charlatan’s moustache.”- simile; a charlatan is someone that lies
and tricks. The idea that her physical nature is deceiving. Sexual description. Creating an illusion of
something beautiful that, in reality, does not last.
STANZA 3
“In dreamy abstractedness” – unaware of everything else around her; invested solely on herself. Also
oblivious to an inevitable future, a concrete one.
“every part that might be loved”- she is making herself more beautiful for someone else. Also,
implication that there are parts to her that might not be loved; she is not loved as a whole but as parts.
Another implication that she does not “moisturize” parts of her body that won’t be loved that emphasises
that she doesn’t beautify herself for personal satisfaction but for someone else.
“Her long hands / move in rhythm like a weaver’s at a loom-”- an awed and dreamy tone from the
persona, almost in appreciation of her young body. The enjambment portrays the continuity and flow of
her body which shows that she is in tune with her body. The connotation of a weaver’s experience on a
loom, where to gain rhythm they must practice, supports this idea and also shows how she has been doing
this for a long time; she knows her body.
“…her hair so clean it looks like a waterfall.”- cliché simile; you are doing what everyone else does. The
idea that all young women are the same.
“LEISURE CENTRE”-ANALYSIS AND NOTES
STANZA 4
“A bee could sip her.” – metaphor. Implying she is flower or honey. Dynamic verb “sip” is very short
lived and ephemeral; emphasising that the beauty doesn’t last forever.
“She is so much younger than the rest of us.” – declarative statement and end-stopped line; has a hint of
jealousy and envy. Express how women always compare themselves and envy each other frequently. But,
could also be a pitiful and concerned tone for a young girl, so innocent and unaware with no experience to
understand her realities as a woman.
END LINES 1/2/3
These last lines are isolated with line breaks which could show how eventually her appearance will fall
apart and her looks will fade. It could also show how she is alone and craves love.
“She should look around.” – end stopped line. The verb “should” portray how she is indulged in her own
world of beauty and youth that she is oblivious to the realities around her.
“We twelve are the chorus:”; “We know what happens next.” – allusion to the chorus who were
commentators in Greek dramas who knew what was going to happen next as third person omniscient
narrators.
- This suggests that there were multiple women. Implies that these women know something that the
young women do not.
- “twelve” could also symbolise a year, 12 months, that shows that as time passes, the truth to the
nature of a woman’s physicality will be revealed.
- The line break between these two lines emphasise the generational age gaps between the young
woman and the personas and, resultantly, the differences in the experiences.
- The idea that the persona is not revealed until the end of the poem mirrors how young women are
not aware of the realities of life until they go through a process in time to find out.
STRUCTURE
- Roughly 3 stanzas and 3 separated lines at the end.
- A loose structure that eventually breaks down from stanzas to separated lines made up of broken
syntax.
- Fragmented.
MUSIC/PROSODIC FEATURES
Repetitive sounds: plosive sounds in “body more beautiful”; “showered away”; builds a lyrical sound
which creates an almost dreamy and soothing tone.
TERMINOLOGY
Adjectives: “honey coloured”; “lithe”; “young”; “perfect”; “clean”; describes the young woman in a light
of perfection like a goddess.
Modern nouns: “pool chemicals”; suggests the artificialness of the woman’s description.
THEMES
Beauty: she is “absorbed in making her body more beautiful”; using commercial products like exfoliants,
she tries to fit into the ideal figure that media portrays. The idea of an ephemeral beauty that is given too
much importance over things like health in the contemporary modern day. Beauty will eventually run out.
“LEISURE CENTRE”-ANALYSIS AND NOTES
Youth: the older personas have grown and is envious of the younger woman. The idea that youth does not
remain forever and with time, looks will fade.
Sexualisation: the description of her “left cleft” being like a “charlatans’ moustache” portrays how she
pretends to be one thing whereas she is something else on the inside. The sexual nature of her descriptions
might emphasise how she just wants to be loved.
Society: society’s expectations of a woman’s physical looks and her body; expectations.
Ageing and time
Generational differences
Womanhood

LINKS AND CONNECTIONS (TO OTHER POEMS)

- An Easy Passage: WOMANHOOD; AGEING; TIME; GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES
- The map woman: WOMANHOOD; IDENTITY; SOCIETY