CAMBRIDGE PRIMARY ENGLISH 6 WORKSHEET 9B

Name Date

Worksheet 9B: Responding to poetry

Read the poem Fruit in a Bowl by Guyanese poet A. J. Seymour.

Fruit in a bowl. Yellow bananas, cool and firm to feel

Full golden apples with veined skins
so fine
That just a look might burst them –
Tangerines
For all the world like small green
solid bells
Promising little kisses of astringency.
Lying in curves of silken-tongued delight.
And great plumpted mangoes, sweetness to
the seed.
Huge cut pawpaws bearing dark-seedling
cargoes.
And sapodillas with their sweet, brown
kernels
Aching to change to sugar once again.

Tropical fruit.

by A. J. Seymour

Glossary
astringency: sharpness of taste that makes the mouth pucker
cargoes: goods carried by a vehicle

kernel: part of a nut or seed inside the hard shell which you can usually eat

tropical: in or from the hottest parts of the world.

1 How many stanzas does the poem have and how long are they?

2 One of the fruits is compared to two things in a simile.

Which fruit and what is it compared to?

Cambridge Primary English 6 – Burt and Ridgard © Cambridge University Press 2021 1
 CAMBRIDGE PRIMARY ENGLISH 6 WORKSHEET 9B

3 a Which word in the poem would you not find in the dictionary?

b What do you think it means?

c Is it an example of alliteration or onomatopoeia? Explain.

4 What does the pawpaw bearing ‘dark-seedling cargoes’ make you think of?

5 Give an example of personification from the poem.

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