AS Literature - Paper 1 - Gillian Clarke Poems

AS Level English Literature
Paper 1, Section B: Poetry
Gillian Clarke
Selected Poems
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C.I.S AS Literature Paper 1, Section B: Poetry
Gillian Clarke Selected Poems
From: https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/gillian-clarke
Biography: Gillian Clarke
Gillian Clarke was born in Cardiff, Wales, and now lives with her family on a
smallholding in Ceredigion.
She has written books for children, including The Animal Wall: and other
poems (1999), Owain Glyn Dwr 1400-2000 (2000) and One Moonlit Night (1991), the
latter being translations from the Welsh of traditional stories by T. Llew Jones. She
has also written for stage, television and radio, several radio plays and poems being
broadcast by the BBC.
Gillian Clarke has published several collections of poetry including Letter From a Far
Country (1982); Letting in the Rumour (1989); The King of Britain's Daughter (1993);
and Five Fields (1998). The latest three collections have all been Poetry Book Society
Recommendations.
She is President of Ty Newydd, the Writer's Centre in North Wales which she co-
founded in 1990, and teaches on the M.Phil Writing Course at the University of
Glamorgan. She has travelled widely giving poetry readings and lectures, and her
work has been translated into ten languages.
Gillian Clarke's most recent poetry collection is A Recipe for Water (2009). In 2008
she published a book of prose, including a journal of the writer's year, entitled At
The Source, and was named as Wales' National Poet. In 2010 she was awarded the
Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. In 2011 she was made a member of the Gorsedd of
Bards. In 2012 she received the Wilfred Owen Association Poetry award. The
book Ice was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2012.
Bibliography
2012 Ice
2009 A Recipe for Water
2008 At The Source
2004 Making the Beds for the Dead
2000 Owain Glyn Dwr 1400-2000
2000 Nine Green Gardens
2000 Bioverse
2000 Magpies
1999 The Animal Wall: and other poems
1998 Banc Siôn Cwilt: A Local Habitation and a Name
1998 Five Fields
1997 Collected Poems
1996 Cell Angel
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1996 The Whispering Room: Haunted Poems
1996 I Can Move the Sea: 100 poems by children
1993 The King of Britain's Daughter
1991 One Moonlit Night
1989 Letting in the Rumour
1985 Selected Poems
1982 Letter from a Far Country
1978 The Sundial
1971 Snow on the Mountain
Critical Perspectives
[Interview with Barry

Wood, Sheer Poetry 24 August 2005]
So it was entirely appropriate that she was appointed the National Poet of Wales in
2008, a culmination of many years of dedication to her culture and to the art of
poetry itself. Her view of that poetic tradition is also pragmatic. Unlike her
distinguished contemporary Menna Elfyn and other Welsh-language poets, Clarke
characteristics typical of Welsh-language poetry, such as traditional strict metres, into

Turning Tides 2004]
Rooted in her rural home territory of West Wales as her writing is, its other side is
an international world view concerned with justice, war and peace. A striking
-
ld
cradles a mouse fatally injured by the tractor blade. The poet has a bad dream about
-ribs, the air/ stammering with gunfire, my
of the 1990s conflicts in former Yugoslavia brings that faraway violence into
personal focus. Another poem from her collection Five Fields (1998) is even more
old ewe having to be helped to give birth while the peace negotiations in Northern
A further characteristic of her writing, arguably a facet of her traditionalism, is its
came to prominence with the long title poem in Letter from a Far Country (1982),
which was written for radio and highly acclaimed when broadcast.
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day/ after snow, an hour after frost,/ the thickening grass begi
m the
North, all calling/ their daughters down from the fields,/ calling me in from the
in white moonlight I wake/ from sleep one whole slow minute/ before the hungry
child
As her writing has developed, such arcadian scenes have given way to the harsher
evoked so movingly in Making Beds for the Dead st the animals lost
is the agony of watching cattle and sheep being put down, a lam
-
Thomas and Ted Hughes (the latter a key influence for her habitual observations of
A Recipe for Water (2009) has themes of water and language, memory and meaning:
childhood, moving between English and Welsh-speaking relatives, is encapsulated

e your
llanw, lli./ The waves
repeat their ll-ll-ll
inspired by the port cities of Cardiff actually her birthplace and Mumbai in India,
upon home thoughts, as when reflecting upon the water-borne occupation of

- gorhendaid,/ working the stone-boats on the Menai
Straits/ to t
Her latest collection Ice (2012) returns to the natural world of animals, birds, weather,
but also to her family history. Winter is its setting, with many marvellous images of
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is a season for memorializing its inevitable victims, whether a local tramp or a
Wern
-
Her own youth is now viewed in the conte
to poetry,
es itself make her an inspiring
and exemplary figure.
Dr Jules Smith (2013)
From https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poet/18864/Gillian -Clarke/en/tile
A central figure in contemporary Welsh poetry, Clarke was editor of The

Anglo-Welsh Review (now the New Welsh Review) from 1975 to 1984, and is a
-
founded in 1990. Clarke has been a tutor in Creative Writing at the
University of Glamorgan since 1994. She is a judge for the Poetry
Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2010.
Clarke has honed her considerable artistic practice to create, over the years,
a body of poetry which deals with the inner essentials of universal human
needs and the outer specifics of a distinctive Wales, her take on Wales,
Although her poetry is often anchored in a Welsh rural landscape, it is

never insular but looks beyond the regional to the wider world. Clarke has
the private
Sheer Poetry) This
is clearly seen in her po - Five Fields) where news
of the war in Bosnia taints the idyllic landscape :
The air hums with jets.

Down at the end of the meadow
Far from the terrible news,
We cut the hay. All afternoon
Its wave breaks before the tractor blade.
[...]
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Summer in Europe, the fields hurt,
[...]
And we face the newspapers
With a keen sense of the public role of the poet, Clarke has written many
poems in direct response to momentous events, both in the UK the
Paddington Rail Crash, the outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease, and the
Making the Beds for the Dead

Five Fields) and globally September 11th
in Making the Beds for the Dead
Clarke has said that she finds it a rich source of inspiration to read books
of three different genres simultaneously; a book of poetry, a book of fiction
and a book of non-fiction on a subject such as biology, archaeology or
felt in her work, in which she delves both into the history of the earth and
Making
the Beds for the Dead,
These glimpses of a past world are made relevant to the present, through
-
hundred million years,/ granite from Pembrokeshire. Is it this/ we tread
-
This emphasis on a continuous interplay between past and present,

between the land and the people who inhabit it, creates an inclusive sense
Letter from a
Far Country, where the mundane task of hanging out the washing becomes
y Grandmother might be standing/
in the great silence before the Wars./
Here, human and nature are also depicted in perfect symbiosis, part of the
same life cycle:
The people have always talked.

The landscape collects conversations
as carefully as a bucket,
gives them back in concert
with a wood of birdsong
imagery is rich and instantly evocative in its detail. As Belinda

Cooke write in Poetry Ireland Review: is typical of her writing is a
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physical immediacy the concrete detail that provides an eureka-like
Rebecka Mustajarvi
From: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/culture-magazines/clarke-gillian
Gillian Clarke writes of her native Wales, of the elements that form and shape it: "It
is not easy./There are no brochure blues or boiled sweet/Reds. All is ochre and
earth and cloud-green/Nettles tasting sour and the smells of moist earth and sheep's
wool " ("Blaen Cwrt"). Rain, unyielding stone, the "uncountable miles of
mountains," and the "big, unpredictable sky" underlie her work. Beneath her
apparently artless syntax is a complex system of assonance; repeated vowels and
consonants keep the poems both tight and resonant. Many of Clarke's syntactical
experiments are based on the metrical devices of traditional Welsh poetry.
Clarke's collection The Sundial deals with death, abandonment, and time passing, and
there is a constant sense of people pushing back the wilderness, keeping primordial
forces at bay. But these huge themes are carefully concealed in domestic disguises.
For example, in the title poem a young son's sundial gives rise to the final stanza:
All day we felt and watched the sun

Caged in its white diurnal heat,
Pointing at us with its black stick.
Though rural life looms large, this is the province of primitive archetypes rather than
country idylls. In "Storm Awst"
They said was coming. All the signs

Were bad, the gulls coming in white,
Lapwings gathering, the sheep too
Calling all night. The gypsies
Were making their fires in the woods
There is no comfort in this world, and even in the secure setting of "Baby-Sitting"
the speaker fears the waking of her charge:
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Abandonment. For her it will be worse
Than for the lover cold in lonely
Sheets; worse than for the woman who waits
A moment to collect her dignity
Beside the bleached bone in the terminal ward.
As she rises sobbing from the monstrous land
Stretching for milk-familiar comforting,
She will find me and between us two
It will not come. It will not come.
Clarke's second major collection, Letter from a Far Country, exhibits the same
preoccupations though the tone is less intense, more refined. Here the rhythms of
rural life prevail in poems like "Scything," "Buzzard," and "Friesian Bull." Death is
always close, but there is an acceptance of it, as in "The Ram," which begins, "He
died privately./His disintegration is quiet./Grass grows among the stems of his ribs
The title poem of the collection is a wonderful rambling meditation written originally
for radio. Centered around a real parish in Wales, it explores "the far country" of the
past and the imagined lives of its women inhabitants. Clarke reveals a remarkable
sea-caves, cellars; the back stairs/behind the chenille curtain; the
landing when the lights are out;/ " or "A stony
track turns between ancient hedges, narrowing,/like a lane in a child's book./Its
perspective makes the heart restless/The minstrel boy to the war has gone./But the
girl stays. To mind things./She must keep. And wait. And pass time./There's always
" In such discreet phrases Clarke voices women's
discontent: "The gulls grieve at our contentment./It is a masculine
question./'Where' they call 'are your great works?'/They slip their fetters and fly
up/to laugh at land-locked women./Their cr "
In its solemn, reticent way this poem celebrates the lives of women: "It has always
been a matter/of lists. We have been counting,/folding, measuring,
making,/tenderly laundering cloth/ever since we have been women." The poem
concludes with an easy rhythmical verse that, for all its lightness of touch, expresses
a profound confusion about the choices facing contemporary women: "If we launch
the boat and sail away & Who'll catch the nightmares and ride them away & Will the
men grow tender and the children strong? & Who will do the loving while we're
away?"
The new poetry in Clarke's 1985 Selected Poems is more lyrical than her previous work.
There is a maturity about these poems. For example, in "October" the poet
proclaims, "& I must write like the wind, year after year/passing my death day,
winning ground." And "Climbing Cader Idris" begins, "You know the mountain
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with your body,/I with my mind, I suppose./Each, in our own way, describes/the
steepening angle of rock &" Here nature is no longer the vengeful adversary, but
rather more an accomplice. Poems like "Epithalamium" reveal unbridled, joyful
celebration, and even the stark, sad "The Hare," written in memory of the poet
Frances Horovitz, ends on a note of calm acceptance:
and I'm on fire with my arguments
at your great distance you can calm me still.

Your dream, my sleeplessness, the cattle
asleep under a full moon,
and out there

the dumb and stiffening body of the hare.
Katie Campbell
Some general critical observations on Clarke which could be incorporated

into essays:
Like her contemporary, Seamus Heaney, who devoted himself to the question of Irish
nationalism and the rhythms and dialects of the Irish peoples, Clarke has always centred
her poems in a specifically Anglo-Welsh idiom by incorporating the Welsh language and
The continual referencing of sheep in her writing firmly centres Clarke in the tradition of
pastoral literature where the role of the shepherd echoes that of the protector, even the
Christ-figure, and builds on the Blakean notion of the vulnerability or corruptibility of
Romanticism and in so doing she firmly establishes herself in the realism of a

contemporary world where nature is not necessarily an extension of human sentiment, but
Like the Lake Poets of 19th century Romanticism, Clarke does exalt the staggering
beauty of the natural countryside landscape and often sees its harmonies Arcadian
qualities as being in astute accordance with the human psyche. The human figure
consorting with nature is a reoccurring trope in Clarke
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as vehicles of escape and freedom often in contrast to her grounded human
a Freudian psychoanalytical system of the repressed subconscious. Under the surface of

water, the layers of suppressed memories seem to reside, often hidden in opaque layers or
dominant and the subdominant in what is seemingly constructed from the framework of
e motif that couples the active with
an Eco-poet in as much as she advocates for the preservation of natural states of being and
decries the denigratio
which centres intensely on the cathartic symbolism present in ancient cleansing and burning
rituals which have their origin
people pushing back the wilderness, keeping primordial forces at bay and yet these large-
scale themes are carefully conc
about death succeeds in renouncing the significance of death, alluding back to the
metaphysical writings of John Donne.
Clarke is nothing if not a devotee to the notion of poetry as a vehicle for confession. She
transposes memories into acts of atonement, even if in the process she risks exposing her
own maternal shortcomings by focalising the rawness of truth.
phrasing is sometimes pointedly ambiguous and her meanings deftly concealed in what the
reader suspects
According to literary critic, Sarah Jane Bentley, a quality that endears the reader to
moments in her poetry are all heart-breaking but reassuring for the reader as we realise
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that it is only natural to encounter deep pain and sadness for things beyond our control,
According to literary critic, Sarah Jane Bentley,
According to literary critic, Sarah Jane Bentley, The Welsh past is both a burden and a
blessing to the Anglo-Welsh poet. Clarke forges connections between the past and the
present through imagery of layering which acts as a metaphor for the function of memory
Clarke is the quintessential wordsmith, forging intense and memorable imagery out of her
very specific combinations of diction. Her lines are distinctive and original, and often
highly concentrated on the lyrical sonic qualities of the Welsh dialect, thus echoing the
As a poet, it seems as if Clarke constantly practices bricolage, always ready to gather
The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas formulated an imagery acutely concentrated on the theme
of unity of life and death as part of a continuing process of the natural order which in
arguably a f
The literary critic, Rebecka Mustajarvi, considers that there is an emphasis on a continual
interplay between past and present, between the land and the people who inhabit it which
rendered its metaphors and symbols somewhat crude and obvious. Yet her later more
mature output sees a distinctive voice which is able to make lines and images electric and
In dealing with women, Clarke seems to have been ambivalent towards the influence of the
radical ideologues of First Wave Feminism, and instead allows her own refined feminine
gaze to nonetheless capture the status and position of women in what was still a highly
N. Hovelmeier
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Further General Critical Observations on Clarke:
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Clarke tends to write in either free verse (no discernible metric setting) or loosely
structured blank verse (some metrical standard). She rarely incorporates rhyme but
does accentuate her cadences (the concluding sound of phrases) occasionally with
half rhymes or soft rhymes. She will often mimic the musicality of the Welsh dialect
with an attention to assonance and sibilance, but will counter this with plosives
(stand out) and cacophonous (harsh) sounds too. Her syntax (ordering of words)
tends to be fluid and lyrical, but she will occasionally disrupt this to suggest anxiety
or rising tension ( Babysitting is an example). Early writing tended to be more
formalised (evidenced by the use of capitalisation for the beginning of lines) and
metaphorically overt but later writing is less obviously structured and her imagery
and use of symbolism more subtle and dense. She rarely standardizes the lengths of
her stanzas, although will occasionally write in either triads or quatrains.
Clarke seeks to intentionally avoid (or even obstruct) pathetic fallacy (the mimicry
of human sentiment in nature) in favour of a kind of lyrical realism. Her narrative
structures are intensely individualistic; nearly all her writing is from the first person
perspective; occasionally it is observational. She incorporates a scattering of Welsh
language into her diction but writes firmly in the Anglo-Welsh tradition. Her writing
is not particularly allusive, but she will sometimes reference the mythological or
biblical. Her diction is eco-centeric and geo-specific and often her lyricism is derived
from an intense usage of localised botanical labelling, generating the impression of
foreign exoticism in her work which is in reality more colloquial (specific to her
domain). Her prosody (the rhythm, stress and intonation of speech) is very stylised
and because of an intense focus on the aesthetics (beauty) of sound and language,
her observations can very easily appear deeply philosophical in nature. However, she
tends to retain a narrow gaze on the personal, familial, intimate and parochial (close
to her own environs). She favours a very focalised female lens which incorporates a
vaguely distanced and sometimes ambiguous sense of the maternal too. Her
psychopathology would suggest she retains a wariness of close domestic
arrangements, with recurring hints of a dark trauma in her youth or early
womanhood and a lingering unresolved discomfort with her own childhood
environment which she sometimes projects onto her own children.
Her literary output is rarely humorous and often skirts with themes of the tragic and
consequential. There is a sense of humanism in her approach, but she can also be
wry (indifferent and ironic) and sarcastic in tone too.
N. Hovelmeier
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Common Literary Terms
1. General Comments on language:

a. Words such as diction, register, tone, atmosphere, mood, rhetoric and
theme can all be used appropriately to describe the overall language of
a text.
b. Diction: refers to the choice of words used by a writer. To write an
effective commentary, you must analyse why the writer has used the
type of words he/she does. Do they create a specific effect? Are they
chosen because of their sounds? Are the words colloquial do they
belong to a certain place; are they slang do they describe modern
trends; are they a type of vernacular words used by certain people
from different cultures? Are the words archaic in other words old
fashioned or out of date?
c. Register: refers to the appropriate use of words. For example, a
passage of journalism will use a more formal style of words which are
always correct, factual and generally unbiased or non-emotive. A
passage of satire will probably use words that invoke exaggeration
(hyperbole), understatement (euphemism) or sarcasm. A passage on a
foreign place or culture will probably contain a register that invokes the
senses: sight, taste, smell, sound etc. A tragic piece will use an emotive
(emotion-making) register.
d. Rhetoric: is simply a collective term for a passage that contains many
figures of speech or literary devices. Such a passage could be described
e. Tone, atmosphere, mood:

whole tries to capture. A descriptive passage will try to capture the
atmosphere of a location by using rich adjectives and comparisons; a
story of warfare will try to create a tone of tension, suspense, drama. A
satirical piece will be more up-beat in tone.
f. Theme: this is easy to identify as all writing has a theme to it, or a
conveying. Concepts such as cultural identity, corruption, feminism,

racism, abuse, love, triumph over adversity, achievement, global
awareness, the environment, child labour, etc. Often writers introduce
their themes gradually and then develop them over the course of the
thematic development
the writer develops his ideas thematically by looking at the different
variations he/she incorporates onto the general theme.
2. Specific Modes of Speech:

a. Metaphors:
win
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is directly compared to a bulldozer, thus creating an image or
perception of strength and might. Metaphors are used to create visual
images and are part of what commonly forms imagery. Sometimes a
writer will use an extended metaphor which is simply a comparison
that runs over several sentences; or is returned to later in the passage;
or is developed along familiar lines. An idea that uses metaphors, or a
passage that contains metaphors is described as metaphoric.
b. Similes: a simile is a metaphor which uses an indirect comparison.
They can be identified because the words as or like are used. For
like
c. Personification: is when imagery is created by giving non-living
objects (inanimate) human or animal characteristics. Or else animals
moaned and whined spluttered to a

e personified.
d. Symbolism: sometimes a writer will insert a specific object into
his/her passage that clearly represents something. Such images are
said to be symbolic. White often symbolises purity, innocence, peace.
Red is symbolic of anger or passion. A ring symbolises unity; a cross
symbolises religion; a wall symbolises division; a bull symbolises
strength, a fox cunningness, an eagle precision etc.
e. Onomatopoeia: for effect, a writer may choose a word with a specific
sound that directly implies an objec
clanging shriek
described as onomatopoeic and are used to create realism (reality) in
writing.
f. Alliteration: a string of words all beginning with the same letter or
sound is said to be alliterative. An author will use alliteration to convey
a sense of rhythm, continuity, regularity or to make a statement stand
many men make matters m
g. Sibilance:
unusual rhythm and sound. It is often employed to make a sentence or

sound of silence stunned the
s
h. Assonance: is the repetitive use of vowel sounds. Vowels, in contrast
to consonants, when used collectively tend to create a very smooth,
ore love looming in the
world, the more power in the so
sound is both effective and distinctive: it gives the sentence a tranquil,
graceful sound.
i. Euphony: is the use of pleasant sounding words. Often assonance and
euphony go hand in hand. If a word or phrase sounds pleasant to the
ear, like music, it is described as euphonic or euphonious. A typical
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j. Cacophony: is the opposite of euphony. These are unpleasant or
plosive
cacophonous phrase can be loud, abrasive, harsh to the ear. For

nto the blackness of
k. Paradox: is an apparently absurd or senseless statement which can
contradictory statements, yet all make sense. Paradoxes are used to

create the effect of exposing something profound or else they give
great emphasis to an important point. If ideas are used in this manner,
they are said to be paradoxical. The term paradoxically is also used.
l. Antithesis: -
in a paradox, uses contrasting words to great effect. Unlike the
paradox, the use of antithesis is more straight-forward and does not
hot
and stuffy, yet Marsha felt cold and empty
m. Oxymoron: also a form of contrast, this is when an author will place

two words opposite in meaning next to one another for effect. For
sweet sorrow
in this statement are contrasts, yet the statement is given a deeper
injuries we suffered, the victory was only bitter sweet
n. Pun: the pun is a clever play on words, or when a word can have a
double liver
n mean 1) the organ in your body which is vital for life,
o. Euphemism: is an understatement, or a pleasant way of saying

something unpleasant. Often they can be sarcastic, depending on the
cont
euphemistic way of saying it, in a more formal setting,
p. Innuendo: is a devise whereby a writer or speaker will hint at

something without saying it openly. Often innuendos are more
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hints that the person in question has been out
partying and drinking.
q. Hyperbole: a statement which is a gross exaggeration is said to be
hyperbolic. In satire, comedy, sarcasm etc, writers employ hyperbole
to give a sense of the ludicrous, absurd or the impossible, which,
r. Dichotomy: this is more of a general term which does not apply

specifically to individual statements, but to ideas at large. If two
extreme positions are conveyed, there is dichotomy (literally meaning
opposite of
what was previously stated, then this is said to be dichotomous. It is
a term normally used when discussing a formal or journalistic piece of
writing, when the journalist takes the view of two different positions.
For example, if they talk of the wealth of Hollywood actors, with their
expensive cars and homes, the dichotomy of that would be then to
talk of the extreme poverty of some people living in Africa.
s. Climax: simply put, an author will sometimes work to build up tension
gradually in their writing until they reach a grand climatic moment, or
resolution when a final even occurs or an ending is attained. However,
quite often a writer finds that an anti-climax or bathos is a more
effective way of concluding their piece. Anti-climaxes often leave
ave the reader
pondering more about the potential outcome of what was not
concluded by the author or they will reflect on why the author chose
to conclude as they did.
t. Pathos: is used to generate emotion or sadness in the reader. When
something occurs which is poignant, or touching or invokes out
-
u. Sympathy: is generated when we feel sorry for the characters we have

read about. We are sympathetic towards them.
v. Empathy: is different from sympathy in that in addition to perhaps
feeling sorry for a character, we can also imagine or envision ourselves
in a similar situation. We become empathetic.
w. Catharsis: occasionally we feel so connected to a character that we
almost undergo the same emotional journey as they do and at the end,
when the ordeal is over, we experience a certain relief. This is because
the writing has a cathartic effect on us. Another term for catharsis is
purging, or purgative.
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x. Irony: in prose writing, irony often exposes differences in what is said
by a character and what is done, or else instances occur which had
previously been thought unlikely.
3. General Stylistic Aspects:

a. Genre: A piece of writing that deals with controversial aspects is called
a polemic, or it is polemical. Additionally, writing that sets out a clear
argument or arguments on a particular subject is called discursive.
Writing that aims specifically to educate is called didactic. Writing in
the form of a speech is called oratorical. In the form of letters it is
called epistolary.
b. Literary genre: in addition, it may be valuable to identify the type of
narrative you are analysing. The literary genre of the narrative may
include allegory, fable, parable, satire, tragedy, comedy and farce.
An allegory is a story that works on many different layers; it may
appear to be a straight forward or simple story, but it is intended to
have a deeper, often moral meaning. Therefore, a story about a boy
who sells newspapers to earn some pocket money may in fact be an
allegory on child exploitation. It is allegorical. A fable is a type of
allegory using animals to represent different human stereotypes. A
parable is a simplified allegory in which the moral message is very clear
or implicit. Satire refers to writing that aims to expose a certain
element of society, normally in a mocking or comic way. It is, in effect,
social criticism critique
exists in visual arts: comic strips in newspapers lampooning (showing
up) political figures or celebrities is visual satire. Farce could be
satirical too: a type of comedy that is absurd, ludicrous or far-fetched
in which many complicated twists occur is farcical writing.
c. Narrative Viewpoint: it is important to examine what narrative point
of view the author has used. Generally writing is either first-person
third-person
(where the author stands back and removes himself from the
narrative.) The first-person narrative makes the writing personalised
(subjective
third-person is more omnipotent and we are given a more

generalised and objective presentation of events as they unfold. The
rare second-person
d. Stylistic interjects: sometimes writes make clever use of punctuation
to enhance the effect of their writing. A simple exclamation mark (!)
immediately heightens the importance of a statement. Parenthesis
observations about an instance or a character which draws emphasis to

it. Ellipses (...) are used at the end of some sentences or paragraphs
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to denote what is not actually written but implied. The rhetorical
question poses a thought in question form, but often the answer is
already known or does not need to be known, yet the point is
highlighted.
e. Jamesian silences: when two characters exchange glances without
speaking, yet we, as reader, are aware of what is being implied, we call
this a Jamesian silence.
f. Sentence length: look at the varying lengths of sentences. Short
sentences give impact and can be dramatic; longer ones invoke more
detail and atmosphere.
Approaching Poetry
Title
What is its significance, its bearing on the text, its possible double meanings?
Structure
shape, visual look, length of stanzas, sentences, paragraphs.
Is it a sonnet? Are certain phrases/lines repeated? Is much dialogue used?
Rhythm
In poetry, look for rhyme schemes and the intention of rhyme. Is the poem
written in free verse or blank verse? Are repetitions used? If prose, are there any
discernible rhythms of speech, sounds and so on?
Sounds
Look for onomatopoeia, alliteration, sibilance, assonance, euphony, cacophony
Point of View
1st, 2nd or 3rd person why has the POV been used? What are the limitations,
effects on the tone, presentation or meaning of the text because of the POV?
Literary Devices
metaphor, symbolism, simile, personification, irony, innuendo, hyperbole, etc.
WHY have they been used? WHY are they effective?
Diction/Language
Look at choice of vocab, vernacular, slang, register, syntax, punctuation, etc.
WHY have these decisions been made?
Tone/Mood
comedy/tragedy, reflective, melancholy, profound, nostalgic, sentimental, etc.
Themes
family, death, relationships, society, class, youth, politics, fairness, justice, etc.
Overall Message
is there a moral, grand idea, deep thought, lesson being taught, observation?
20
Essay Topics and Past Examination Questions on Clarke:
General questions already examined by Cambridge:

In what ways, and with what effects, does Clarke present death in two
poems from your selection?
Compare ways in which Clarke presents the importance of memories in two
poems.
Discuss the writing and effects of two poems in which Clarke explores ideas
of home.
Discuss the writing and effects of two poems in which Clarke presents the
relationship between adults and children.
Discuss the writing and effects of two poems in which Clarke explores
feelings of loss.
Contextual questions already examined by Cambridge:

Discuss the presentation of nature in the following poem. In your answer
you should
NETTLES]
your answer you should pay close attention to poetic methods and effects.
[WHITE ROSES]
In your
[RAM]
Discuss the presentation of winter and its effects in the following poem. In
[FEBRUARY]
Discuss the presentation of the different attitudes in the following poem. In
your answer you should pay close attention to Clarke s poetic methods.
[CLIMBING CADER IRIS]
Possible general essay questions which might be examined:

In what ways, and with what effects, does Clarke deal with the creative
process in two poems from your selection?
Discuss how successfully, and with what effects, Clarke deals with issues
relating to women in two poems you have studied.
Compare ways in which Clarke deals with the idea of family in two poems
you have studied.
Discuss how effectively Clarke presents the notion of community in two
poems you have studied.
21
Compare the ways in which people are seen to interact with animals in two
poems you have studied.
To what extent, and with what effects, does Clarke deal with relationships
between adults in two poems from your selection?
How effectively does Clarke present the themes of confined spaces and
closed environments in two of the poems from your selection?
Examining two poems from your selection, to what extent, and with what
effects, could Clarke be considered a particularly Welsh poet?
Compare ways in which Clarke presents the natural world in two poems
from your selection.
With reference to two poems in your selection, to what degree does Clarke
deal with themes of a religious or spiritual nature?
Discuss how effectively Clarke addresses global or international concerns in
two poems from your collection.
In what ways, and with what effects, does Clarke write about animals in two
poems from your selection?
22
Alphabetical List of Poems on the Syllabus
Advent
Apples
Baby-sitting
Blaen Cwrt
Burning Nettles
Catrin
Climbing Cader Idris
Cold Knap Lake
Death of a Cat
Death of a Young Woman
February
Hare in July
Hearthstone
Icthyosaur
Journey
Lunchtime Lecture
My Box
Neighbours
Pipistrelle
Post Script
Ram
Scything
Seal
Stealing Peas
Sunday
Sunday
The Lighthouse
Times Like These
White Roses
23
Chronological List of Poems on the Syllabus
From The Sundial
Journey 14
Blaen Cwrt 15
Baby-Sitting 16
Catrin 17
Death of a Young Woman 18
Lunchtime Lecture 19
Burning Nettles 20
From Letter from a Far Country
White Roses 23
Miracle on St David's Day 24
Scything 26
Ram 27
Sunday 28
Death of a Cat 29
From Selected Poems
Climbing Cader Idris 30
From Letting in the Rumour
Neighbours 32
Seal 33
Ichthyosaur 34
Cold Knap Lake 35
Apples 36
Post Script 37
My Box 38
Hare in July 39
February 40
Times Like These 41
Hearthstone 42
Pipistrelle 44
24
From
Advent 46
The Lighthouse 47
Stealing Peas 48
Sunday 49
25
From The Sundial (1978)
Journey
Blaen Cwrt
Baby-Sitting
Catrin
Death of a Young
Woman
Lunchtime Lecture
Burning Nettles
26
Journey
As far as I am concerned
We are driving into oblivion.
On either side there is nothing,
And beyond your driving
Shaft of light it is black.
You are a miner digging
For a future, a mineral
Relationship in the dark.
I can hear the darkness drip
From the other world where people
Might be sleeping, might be alive.
Certainly there are white

Gates with churns waiting
For morning, their cream standing.
Once we saw an old table
Standing square on the grass verge.
Our lamps swept it clean, shook
The crumbs into the hedge and left it.
A tractor too, beside a load
Of logs, bringing from a deeper
Dark a damp whiff of the fungoid
Sterility of the conifers.
Complacently I sit, swathed

In sleepiness. A door shuts
At the end of a dark corridor.
Ahead not a cat's eye winks
To deceive us with its green
Invitation. As you hurl us
Into the black contracting
Chasm, I submit like a blind
And folded baby, being born.
27
Blaen Cwrt
You ask how it is. I will tell you.

There is no glass. The air spins in
The stone rectangle. We warm our hands
With apple wood. Some of the smoke
Rises against the ploughed, brown field
As a sign to our neighbours in the
Four folds of the valley that we are in.
Some of the smoke seeps through the stones
Into the barn where it curls like fern
On the walls. Holding a thick root
I press my bucket through the surface
Of the water, lift it brimming and skim
The leaves away. Our fingers curl on
Enamel mugs of tea, like ploughmen.
The stones clear in the rain
There are no brochure blues or boiled sweet

Reds. All is ochre and earth and cloud-green
Nettles tasting sour and the smells of moist
Chimney hood has decayed away, slowly

Creeping to dust, chalking the slate
Floor with stories. It has all the first
Necessities for a high standard
Of civilised living: silence inside
A circle of sound, water and fire,
Light on uncountable miles of mountain
From a big, unpredictable sky,
Two rooms, waking and sleeping,
Two languages, two centuries of past
To ponder on, and the basic need
To work hard in order to survive.
28
Baby-Sitting
I am sitting in the wrong room listening

For the wrong baby. I don't love
This baby. She is sleeping a snuffly
Roseate, bubbling sleep; she is fair;
She is a perfectly acceptable child.
I am afraid of her. If she wakes
She will hate me. She will shout
Her hot midnight rage, her nose
Will stream disgustingly and the perfume
Of her breath will fail to enchant me.
To her I will represent absolute

Abandonment. For her it will be worse
Than for the lover cold in lonely
Sheets; worse than for the woman who waits
A moment to collect her dignity
Beside the bleached bone in the terminal ward.
As she rises sobbing from the monstrous land
Stretching for milk-familiar comforting,
She will find me and between us two
It will not come. It will not come.
29
Catrin
I can remember you, child,

As I stood in a hot, white
Room at the window watching
The people and cars taking
Turn at the traffic lights.
I can remember you, our first
Fierce confrontation, the tight
Red rope of love which we both
Fought over. It was a square
Environmental blank, disinfected
Of paintings or toys. I wrote
All over the walls with my
Words, coloured the clean squares
With the wild, tender circles
Of our struggle to become
Separate. We want, we shouted,
To be two, to be ourselves.
Neither won nor lost the struggle

In the glass tank clouded with feelings
Which changed us both. Still I am fighting
You off, as you stand there
With your straight, strong, long
Brown hair and your rosy,
Defiant glare, bringing up
Tightening about my life,

Trailing love and conflict,
As you ask may you skate
In the dark, for one more hour.
30
Death of a Young Woman
She died on a hot day. In a way

Nothing was different. The stretched white
Sheet of her skin tightened no further.
She was fragile as a yacht before,
That one would not know when the breath

Blew out and the sail finally slackened.
Her eyes had looked opaquely in the
Wrong place to find those who smiled
From the bedside, and for a long time
Our conversations were silent.
The difference was that in her house

The people were broken by her loss.
He wept for her and for the hard tasks
He had lovingly done, for the short,
Fierce life she had lived in the white bed,
For the burden he had put down for good.
As we sat huddled in pubs supporting
We felt the hollowness of his release.

Our own ungrateful health prowled, young,
Gauche about her death. He was polite,
Isolated. Free. No point in going home.
31
Lunchtime Lecture
And this from the second or third millennium

B.C., a female, aged about twenty-two.
A white, fine skull, full up with darkness
As a shell with sea, drowned in the centuries.
Small, perfect. The cranium would fit the palm
Destroyed her, and her whiteness lay safe in a shroud

Of silence, undisturbed, unrained on, dark
For four thousand years. Till a tractor in summer
Biting its way through the longcairn for supplies
Of stone, broke open the grave and let a crowd of light
Stare in at her, and she stared quietly back.
As I look at her I feel none of the shock

The farmer felt as, unprepared, he found her.
Here in the Museum, like death in hospital,
Reasons are given, labels, causes, catalogues.
The smell of death is done. Left, only her bone
Purity, the light and shade beauty that her man
Was denied sight of, the perfect edge of the place
Where the pieces join, with no mistakes, like boundaries.
Leafless formality, brow, bough in fine relief.

I, at some other season, illustrate the tree
and the rustling
Blood, the troubled mind that she has overthrown.
We stare at each other, dark into sightless
Dark, seeing only ourselves in the black pools,
Gulping the risen sea that booms in the shell.
32
Burning Nettles
Where water springs, pools, waits

Collection in a bucket
In the late summer heat,
Beech trees observe foresight
Of autumn wrinkling their leaves.
The cold will wither this
Old garden. The plumpness shrinks
Beneath its skin, a light
Frown puckers the mirrored sky.
The scythe bleeds ancient herbs

Whose odours come as ghosts
To disturb memory.
My fire of nettles crackles
Like bees creeping in a green
Hive, making white smoke from weeds,
And the strange, sweet plants Marged
Sowed, or Nanu, before
The wind changed from the east.
With the reaping hook blade

I lift an exhausted moth
From the hot mound. It lives
To die of cold. Inside the cave
Of thatched grass the secret fire
Thrives on my summer. Nettles
Turn to ashes in its heart,
Crucible of the fragrant and
The sour. Only soil survives.
Rose bay willowherb, ragwort,

Grass, disintegrate and make
A white continuous mane
For the mountain. Ponies turn
And pinpoints of ice on skin

Are nettlestings, not rain. Fire,
Buried in flower-heads, makes
33
Bright ritual of decay,
Transubstantiates the green
Leaf to fertility.
34
From Letter from a Far Country (1982)
White Roses
Miracle on St David's Day
Scything
Ram
Sunday
Death of a Cat
35
White Roses
Outside the green velvet sitting room

white roses bloom after rain.
They hold water and sunlight
like cups of fine white china.
Within the boy who sleeps in my care

in the big chair the cold bloom
opens at terrible speed
and the splinter of ice moves
in his blood as he stirs in the chair.

Remembering me he smiles
politely, gritting his teeth
in silence on pain's red blaze.
A stick man in the ashes, his fires

die back. He is spars and springs.
He can talk again, gather
his cat to his bones. She springs
with a small cry in her throat, kneading

with diamond paws his dry
as tinder flesh. The least spark
of pain will burn him like straw.
The sun carelessly shines after rain.

The cat tracks thrushes in sweet
dark soil. And without concern
the rose outlives the child.
36
1
An afternoon yellow and open-mouthed

with daffodils2. The sun treads the path
among cedars and enormous oaks.
It might be a country house, guests strolling,
the rumps of gardeners between nursery shrubs.
I am reading poetry to the insane.

An old woman, interrupting, offers
as many buckets of coal as I need.
A beautiful chestnut-haired boy listens
entirely absorbed. A schizophrenic
on a good day, they tell me later.

In a cage of first March sun a woman
sits not listening, not feeling.
In her neat clothes the woman is absent.
A big, mild man is tenderly led
to his chair. He has never spoken.
gently to the rhythms of the poems.

I read to their presences, absences,
to the big, dumb labouring man as he rocks.
He is suddenly standing, silently,

huge and mild, but I feel afraid. Like slow
movement of spring water or the first bird
of the year in the breaking darkness,
The nurses are frozen, alert; the patients

seem to listen. He is hoarse but word-perfect.
Outside the daffodils are still as wax,
a thousand, ten thousand, their syllables
unspoken, their creams and yellows still.
1
2 Daffodils are the national flower of Wales.
37
Forty years ago, in a Valleys school,
the class recited poetry by rote.
Since the dumbness of misery fell
he has remembered there was a music
of speech and that once he had something to say.
and the daffodils are flame.
38
contrasts in weather
and action
emphasises the action
Scythingnm
(writhing )
to fix nature
trying
It is blue May. There is work ✓
blind
with algae, the stopped water
silent. The garden fills
with nettle and briar.
her son
Dylan drags branches away.
I wade forward with my scythe.
There is stickiness on the blade.

responsible
for death
- Yolk on my hands. Albumen and blood.
Fragments of shell are baby-bones,
medical
the (scythe a scalpel,y bloodied and guilty umbilical chord

with crushed feathers, mosses, the cut cords
of the grass. We shout at each other
each hurting with a separate pain. at '
war
nature
From the crown of the hawthorn tree

to the ground the willow warbler slowly becomes weponised
drops. All day in silence she repeats
her question. I too return
to the place holding the pieces,
at first still hot from the knife,
recall how warm birth fluids are.
miscarriage ? abortion ?
39
Ram
He dies privately.
His disintegration is quiet.
Grass grows among the stems of his ribs,
Ligaments unpicked by the slow rain.
The birds dismantled him from spring nests.
He has spilled himself on the marsh,
His evaporations and his seepings,
His fluids filled a reservoir.
Not long since he could have come
Over the Saddle3 like a young moon,
His cast shadow whitening Breconshire.
The blue of his eyes is harebell.

Mortality gapes in the craters of his face.
Buzzards cry in the cave of his skull
And a cornucopia of lambs is bleating
Down the Fan of his horns.
In him more of October than rose hips
And bitter sloes. The wind cries drily
Down his nostril bones. The amber
Of his horizontal eye
Is light on reservoir, raven
In winter sky. The sun that creams
Whitens his forehead. Flesh

Blackens in the scrolls of his nostrils,
Something of him lingering in bone
Corridors catches my throat.
Seeking a vessel for blackberries and sloes

This helmet would do, were it not filled
Already with its own blacks,
Night in the socket of his eye.
3 Saddle and Fan = parts of the Brecon Beacon mountains.

40
Sunday
Getting up early on a Sunday morning

leaving them sleep for the sake of peace,
the lunch pungent, windows open
for a blackbird singing in Cyncoed4.
Starlings glistening in the gutter come
for seed. I let the cats in from the night,
their fur already glossed and warm with March.
I bring the milk, newspaper, settle here
in the bay of the window to watch people
walking to church for Mothering Sunday.
A choirboy holds his robes over his shoulder.
The cats jump up on windowsills to wash
and tremble at the starlings. Like peaty water
sun slowly fills the long brown room.
Opening the paper I admit to this
the water-shriek and starved stare
of a warning I can't name.
4 Cyncoed = a wealthy suburb of Cardiff.

41
Death of a Cat
His nightmare rocked the house

but no one woke, accustomed
disturbances.
We dug a grave last night

under the apple tree where fruit
fattens in green clusters.
Black and white fur perfect

except where soil fell
or where small blood seeped
between the needles of her teeth

in the cracked china of her bones.
Perfect but for darkness
clotting the skull and silence

like the note of an organ
hanging in the locked air.
Dylan dreamed it again,

woken by caterwauling.
Two mourners held a wake
at dawn on the compost heap

(her special place) yowling
to wake the sleeping and to stop
the heart, considering

animal mysteries,
the otherness of pain.
He watched, from the window,

the dawn moon dissolving
its wafer on the tongue.
42
Climbing Cader Iris from Selected Poems (1985)
(for a mountaineer)
You know the mountains with your body,

I with my mind, I suppose.
Each, in our way, describes
the steepening angle of rock.
What difference now as we,

falling into step and conversation,
put to the test our long
thigh muscles and our breadth,
turning together to the open view,

a distant plough, a lozenge of field.
We face the slope again, our boots
rough-
, the last flower,

5
stream falling among boulders,

the mountain ewe and her lamb and at last
Llyn Cau6 like a secret cupped in hands.
You climb on to the summit
I prefer to stare at shirred water

and the vast face of stone.
I search for words.
you describe that dizzy joy

at the sheer page,
delicate
along a traverse,
just fingertip
5 house.
6 Llyn Cau = a lake under Cader Iris mountain
43
From Letting in the Rumour (1989)
Neighbours
Seal
Ichthyosaur
Cold Knap Lake
Apples
Post Script
My Box
Hare in July
February
Times Like These
Hearthstone
Pipistrelle
44
> stanzas
short
no
rhyme shame
Neighbours
nature delayed
%ed.ie
That spring was late. We watched the sky °
and studied charts for shouldering isobars.

.
Over Finland small birds fell: song-thrushes

steering north, smudged signatures on light,
migrating warblers, nightingales.
.my#uregenerationsyoa.,. . nX
" "
Wing-beats failed over fjords, each lung a sip of gall.

Children were warned of their dangerous beauty.
*
Milk was spilt in Poland. Each quarrel
the blowback from some old story, resent

a mouthful of bitter air from the Ukraine
mum
brought by the wind out of is Ibox of sorrows.]

pandora's jar
?
chemicals
This spring a lamb sips caesium on a Welsh hill.
A child, lifting her head to drink the rain,
takes into her blood the poisoned arrow.
manmade destruction
having learnt
Now we are all neighbourly, each little town

togetherness in Europe twinned to Chernobyl, each heart
with the burnt firemen, the child on the Moscow train.
In the democracy of the virus and the toxin

we wait.0 We watch for spring migrations,
{one} bird returning with green in its voice. waiting
singular
for
hope
Nature
glasnost Healing
golau glas7,
a first break of blue.
7 Golau glas = blue light

45
Seal
When the milk-arrow stabs she comes

water-fluent down the long green miles.
Her milk leaks into the sea, blue
blossoming in an opal.
The pup lies patient in his cot of stone.

They meet with cries, caress as people do.
She lies down for his suckling, lifts him
when the tide fills his throat with salt.
This is the fourteenth day. In two days

no bitch-head will break the brilliance
listening for baby-cries.
Down in the thunder of that other country
the bulls are calling and her uterus is empty.
Alone and hungering in his fallen shawl
a gleaming ring on sand

like the noose she slips on the sea.
46
Ichthyosaur
at the exhibition of Dinosaurs from China
Jurassic travellers
trailing a wake of ammonites.
the broken flotilla of a pilgrimage.

Bone-pods open their secret marrow.
Behind glass she dies, birth-giving.

Millions of years too late it can still move us,
the dolphin-flip of her spine
and the frozen baby turning its head
to the world at the last moment
as all babies do,
drowned as it learned to live.
Small obstetric tragedy,

like a lamb at a field-edge
the wrong way up or strangled at birth
by the mothering cord.
Perhaps earth heaved, slapped a burning hand
on both of them as he ducked under her lintel,
leaving only a grace of bones
eloquent as a word in stone.
47
Cold Knap Lake
We once watched a crowd

pull a drowned child from the lake.
she lay for dead.
Then kneeling on the earth,

a heroine, her red head bowed,
her wartime cotton frock soaked,
The crowd stood silent,

drawn by the dread of it.
The child breathed, bleating
My father took her home to a poor house

and watched her thrashed for almost drowning.
Was I there?
Or is that troubled surface something else
shadowy under the dipped fingers of willows
where satiny mud blooms in cloudiness
after the treading, heavy webs of swans
as their wings beat and whistle on the air?
All lost things lie under closing water
48
Apples
They fill with heat, dewfall, a night of rain.

In a week they have reddened, the seed gone black
in each star-heart. Soft thud of fruit
in the deepening heat of day.
Out of the delicate petals of secret skin
and that irreversible moment when the fruit set,
and such a harvest, so cold and sharp on the tongue.
They look up from the grass, too many to save.

A lapfull of windfalls with worms in their hearts,
under my thumb the pulse of original sin,
flesh going brown as the skin curls over my knife.
I drown them in water and wine, pushing them under,
then breathe apples simmering in sugar and spice,
fermenting under the trees in sacs of juice
49
Post-Script
after judging the poetry competition
Epiphany and burning of the poems

with clippings of the hedge we laid last week,
long loops of bramble, cherry, wild laburnum,
old summer leaves and sodden autumn smoke.
All afternoon I put them to the fire,

handfuls of poems turned to scrolls of vellum,
each a small chimney for a twist of air
then from each broken throat a gasp of flame.
The pages lapse and gild before they burn

like a First Folio lying in a chest.
love and philosophy and loss and lust.
Some of your poems had no voice at all

but sing now with a little sigh of death.
You would be glad to see the way your words
Now they are famous on the hill for miles

and take the green wood by the throat in rage,
ode, elegy, sestina, villanelle
The rotten core of mulch is torn apart

by the stoat-teeth of your verses, now alive.
Your scansion and your imagery start
a sting of sweetness in the
Each page committed. Your last poems burn.

Out with the cliché, archaism, weed.
New year and a fired language is what we need.
50
My Box
My box is made of golden oak,

my gift to me.
He fitted hinges and a lock
of brass and a bright key.
He made it out of winter nights,
sanded and oiled and planed,
engraved inside the heavy lid
in brass, a golden tree.
In my box are twelve black books
where I have written down
how we have sanded, oiled and planed,
planted a garden, built a wall,
seen jays and goldcrests, rare red kites,
found the wild heartsease, drilled a well,
harvested apples and words and days
and planted a golden tree.
On an open shelf I keep my box.
Its key is in the lock.
I leave it there for you to read,
or them when we are dead,
how everything is slowly made,
how slowly things made me,
a tree, a lover, words, a box,
books and a golden tree.
51
My Box a note on possible interpretations:
gardens and apples. Trees in Clarke often represent the rootedness of family, or the
stability of a firmly established hold in and on the Welsh landscape. Here, however,
the
keeping with the evocation of fantasy-
to make the
referred to when a couple has been together for a length of time. The fact that Clarke
demarcates her husband (for we assume that given the length of time talked about it
must be a long term relation
the poem.
-
wearing properties and they grow for centuries. We know that whatever is matured
in oak (whiskies and brandies for example) is particularly treasured and also that oak
infuses a certain distinctive quality into something. This might suggest that Clarke
has gained from her relationship, or that in any relationship, each individual gains
suggest the endurance required for its manufacture, which mirrors the effort
required to sustain a long-term relationship. In addition, the use of the biblical
sanded and oiled and
antique nature of the work done here: carpentry is one of the oldest and noblest of
crafts and there are many mythological and biblical allusions which are evoked by
Trojan horse, et al.
ostensibly appear mysterious or linked with the occult (ancient books of magic or
spells) and yet Clarke immediately negates this mysticism by listing precisely what
they contain. The list is noticeably, and one may cynically say, so very suspiciously
strike a note of being ostensibly clichéd. Is Clarke being honest? Does the box hide
52
structures such as walls and boxes intentionally keep others out?
The poem is generally written in a positive and celebratory register. And yet, also in
he box is
writing which keep objects submerged under their surface echo this claustrophobic
seem to indicate openness, transparency and honesty. While honesty is a particular
books contain (her diary, notes, poems) is not in fact a double-edged sword: like
really want to discover what Clarke thinks
a
the poet: read me at your peril.
The essence of the poem is, in fact, grounded in this determination Clarke has to be
of the
product of everything that has contributed to her life, that has made her, and so in
turn
-
because she believes that poetry needs to evolve within the self for a long period of
time, to ges
extended period. Truth cannot be hurried: it is a product of reflection.
N. Hovelmeier
October 2021
53
Hare in July
All spring and summer the bitch has courted the hare,
thrilled to the scent in a gateway, the musk of speed.
Months while I dug and planted and watched a mist
of green grow to a dense foliage,
neat rows in a scaffolding of sticks and nets,
nose down, tail up in thickening grass
she has been hunting the hare.
Today the big machines are in the field

raising their cromlechs against the sun.
The garden is glamorous with summer.
We cut and rake grass for the fire.
She leaps the bank bearing the weight of her gift,
the golden body of a young jack hare,
blood in its nostrils and a drowning sound.
its eyes as wide and black as peaty lakes.

I feel under my finger one snapped rib
fine as a needle in a punctured lung
Light fades from its fur, and in its eyes

a sudden fall of snow.
54
February
Lamb-grief in the fields

and a cold as hard as slate.
Foot and hoof are shod
with ice. Our footprints

seem as old as ferns in stone.
Air rings in ash and thorn.
Ice on the rain-butt, thick

as a shield and the tap chokes,
its thumb in its throat.
The stream runs black

in a ruff of ice, its caught breath
furls a frieze of air.
At night ice sings

to the strum of my thrown stones
like a snapped heart-string.
leaf, reed, fish, paperweight

in a dream of stone.
55
Times Like These
Too heavy-hearted to go walking

in beech-
is racked by dreams. They wake crying of war.
Pushing a pram in 1961,
I remember how love weighed, anger shored
against helplessness, how we wrote letters
to the papers, raged at Strontium 90,
the bitter rain that stained our mother-milk.
in the womb of the waking embryo,

now resolves into her elements.
Shadow on shining, here she comes dancing
through the bright window of ultra-sound,
fiercer than death and kicking to be born.
In times like these we should praise trees and babies

and take the children walking in beech-woods.
56
Hearthstone
Lifting the slab takes our breath away

Corner to edge, edge to corner.
Its weight steps the plank
shifting from foot to foot.
The van groans slowly home.

We pause to think, eye the gap
and heave again.
A quarter of a ton.
What weighs is the power of it

trembling at finger-tip,
its balancing moment
held like feathers.
Grindings pressed to slate

electric in my hands. We lean
on the ropes and let it
slowly into fresh cement.
Its purples multiplied

as snows, rains, rivers
that laid themselves down
too finely to see or count,
as many stone-years as wings

of the heath blue, jay feather, layers
of oak-shadow, beechmast,
print of a mountain-ash on rockface.
The tree in the crevice, quarryman

in the glittering slip of rain
on million-faceted blue Blaenau,
the purples of Penrhyn.
So the dairy slab that cooled

junkets and wheys, wide dishes of milk
beading with cream, skims for churning,
now becomes pentanfaen,
57
hearthstone. Milky planets
trapped in its sheets
when the book was printed,
float in the slate,
water-marked pages
under a stove
The centre of social life was the hearth-stone. Ancient Welsh homesteads, even the
King's palace, were made of wood, with pent-houses or adjuncts of the same
material, apparently thatched with straw or broom, or, in some cases, with sods. In
the centre of the house, between the middle pillars supporting the roof, lay the
fireplace. At the back of the fireplace stood the fireback stone, the , and
once it had been placed in position it was an offence to remove it.
The house itself might be destroyed, the owners might desert the site and go to
another part of the country or seek other lands in the scattered acres of the tribe to
cultivate, but the pentanfaen' was never removed. It stood as a perpetual sign that
the site where it stood was the site of an occupied homestead, which no one else was
allowed to take possession of in such a way as to prevent the original occupiers
recovering it, if they so willed.
So long as the homestead was occupied the fire was never allowed to go out. Every
evening the embers were raked low, and a sod of peat or of earth was placed on top.
In the morning the sod was removed, and the embers, which had been kept glowing
under the peat, were supplied with new fuel for the day's use.
Peter Thomas Ellis Welsh Tribal Law and Custom in the Middle Ages
58
Pipistrelle
Dusk unwinds its spool

among the stems of plum-trees,
subliminal messenger
on the screen of evening,
a night-glance as day cools
on the house-walls.
illegible freehand
fills every inch of the page.
We sit after midnight
till the ashes cool
The one, in a box, mouse

the size of my thumb in its furs
and sepia webs of silk
a small foreboding,
the psalms of its veins
on bible-paper,
like a rose I spread once in a book

till you could read your future
in the fine print.
59
Pipistrelle a note on possible interpretation:
This poem is intentionally ambiguous (in that the meaning is unclear) and/or
make the narrative purposefully vague which perhaps, in a way, she uses to mirror
or express the complex nature of her own (and our) relationships. In other words,
there is no easy explanation, just as in life there are seldom straight-forward answers
to complicated situa
-
-glance as day cools on the house
A rose is a quintessential symbol of romance. But while it might be beautiful when

fresh and carry a strong perfume, all roses die or dry out. Perhaps love, or at least,
some love affairs do too? In the end, the rose metaphorically dries out and thus it is
stripped back to its true essentials. Gone is its outer beauty and opulence, only to
appears to be on the surface; everything has layers to it, everything is multi-faceted.
vice and suggestions of

how to live life well; so the poem maintains its strange ambiguity.
. If
something is caught in a liminal phase, it is hovering between one thing and another;
it has qualities of both; it can (in this case) be both positive and negative, good and
bad. Bats are thought to resemble liminality due to their androgynous (not clearly
defined) characteristics; they are mammals, but can fly like birds. They are emblems
of foreboding because in lore they forecast the presence of vampiric entities and yet
they are known to be of extreme ecological importance. We are afraid of them, but
we need them. Clarke seems to find in the small bat a similar conundrum; she praises
eco-
attractive, can also be psychologically taxing. In a way she describes human
relationships like this too: the metaphors of the ash cooling and the empty bottle
as if determined to occupy the time together; to see out old age united.
60
The imagery of dusk and the night at the beginning of the poem prophesise the
-
both give us a glimpse of some dark premonition at hand. There are so many bats,
they can hardly be counted and app
of plum-
passion because of the luscious nature of their flesh. Are the bats devouring passion?
Are the bats the million and one routine events in domestic life which disrupt
metaphors of repression (the poems where the surface of water is invoked, for
example) while the dead animal itself continues her thematic propensity to capture
the characteristics of dead animals: the ram, the cat, the hare. It is almost as if the
death of an animal reaffirms the notion of declining life and mortality; what is alive
is destined to die. This includes the lusciousness of the rose too.
N. Hovelmeier
October 2021
61
From (1993)
Advent
The Lighthouse
Stealing Peas
Sunday
62
Advent
After the wideawake galaxies

each dawn is glass.
twig-bones, ice-feathers,
the ghost of starlight.
Ewes breathe silver.
stopped in her tracks.
a leaf caught out,
Deep-down even the water-table

stiffens its linen,
and horizons pleat in a bucket.
The stars burn out

to starved birds
watching my window.
And one leaf puts up a hand
against infinite light.
63
The Lighthouse
In the clean house on the rock

where sleepy headlands drink the evening sea
and floors are cut to fit horizons,
the great fish-eye revolves
in a socket that floats on mercury.
Waters slide and close over the drowned,

their bones add salt to salt, grains
Ninety years the beam has loomed
bursting to flame one placid afternoon,

as he dipped his arm between the stilled facets,
to learn that, if revolution ceased at sunrise,
daylight could turn its eye in on itself
and burn the heart like a collapsing star,

as a child learns fire by capturing the sun
in a magnifying glass
to make Excalibur.
64
Stealing Peas
Tamp of a clean ball on stretched gut.

Warm evening voices over clipped privet.
Cut glass. Saltfish from the mudflats,
and the tide far out.
He wore a blue shirt with an Aertex logo,

filthy with syrups of laurel and rhododendron,
the grime of a town park.
We crawled in the pea-rows
in a stolen green light,
pea-curls catching the tendrils of my hair,
peas tight in their pods as sucklers.
We slit the skins with bitten nails,
and slid the peas down the chutes of our tongues.
The little ones were sweet,
the big ones dusty and bitter.
Beyond the freckled light of the allotment,

the strawberry fields, the pigeon cotes,
a lawn-mower murmured, and the parky shouted
at a child we could not see.
65
Sunday
From the mahogany sideboard in the dining-room
that unlocked her wedding silver,

slide creamy bone from velvet slots,
spoons and forks still powdery with Sylvo,
from their shallow heelprints.
Under the house my father laid his drill,

his ringleted bits, graded and smeared
with a green iridescence of oil.
Screwdrivers, hammers, saws, chisels,
a rising scale, tuned and ready.
Sunday was helping day.
Once, alone for a moment, I saw

the bright nails set for striking.
With my favourite hammer I rang them home.
Some sank sweetly. Some hung sad heads.
Some lay felled, a toehold in the grain.
He stood like thunder at the door.
In the salt-blind dining room

broken by bells and the silence after,
sprouts steamed sourly in the blue tureen.
The cat mimed at the window.
I levelled myself against the small horizon
of the water jug. The mirrors steadied.
If I kept quiet, my eyes on the jug,

tacking across that loop of water,
The cat would walk the garden at my heel,
a stone to the edge, until it fell.
66
This paper has two sections, Section A (Poetry) and Section B (Prose), and you must
answer two questions: one question from each section.
There will be two questions on each text one essay question and one passage-based
question. You choose ONE question to answer for each text. You will be expected
to show a good knowledge and understanding of the whole text, not just part of it.
Poetry does need some special care, and must be treated as the separate genre that
it is; poets use rhyme, rhythm, stanza forms, line lengths, and of course stylistic
devices such as alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, similes, metaphors, for very
particular reasons, not just for their own enjoyment, and you must be sure that you
explore how and why they do this in your answers. It is not enough simply to list any
or all of the techniques that are used; you must make a real attempt to say what
effects they are creating at each relevant moment in the poem, and their significance
to the poem(s) as a whole.
You will not be expected to have read other works by the same writers, or to have
any detailed knowledge of the period in which they were written or of their
biography. Indeed, material of this kind can prove detrimental if it takes you away
from literary consideration of the book you have studied. You will however be
expected to show clearly and confidently that you understand each text in real detail,
so quotations and references will be essential in order to support what you say and
to prove that you have a real and secure knowledge. Obviously you should try your
best to ensure that everything you quote is as close as possible to exactly what the
writer actually wrote, but because this examination is not a test of memory the
examiners will not mind a few misquotations provided that there is never any
doubt about what you mean, and about which part of the text you are quoting, a few
incorrect words will not cost you any marks, though seriously wrong misquotations may
do so!
General advice
. Start to deal
with particular examples or moments as soon as you possibly
introductory paragraphs. Get straight in.
s, or worse
still what you wish it had asked!
the best answers show
of the texts, often accompanied by engagement and
research you have

question, try not to write at length on matters which are outside the text.
67
use technical language when it is helpful
to do so, but do not try to show off your know
me to each
of your answers, and allow about five or ten minutes at the end to check and correct
what you have written.
or fewer questions than you should!
successful than
work where the examiner has to seek out the line of discussion. Selection of relevant
examples is a key skill.
all means od to explore
what others think
(not even y highly. Feel free to tell the examiner what
YOU think in order to best show your skill in giving a personal response.
better than
trying to put down everything you can think of.
tail; this is
obvious, but very important.
ernational
Examinations website www.cie.org.uk and have a look at past papers and the mark
schemes for yourself.
it for
yourself or ask a friend in the same class group to do it for you. Once you know
what is being looked for, you will tighten up your writing a lot!
Written English
This is an examination about literature, but spelling, punctuation and the use of
conventional English do count. You need to remember that one of the things you
are being assessed on is your ability to communicate what you understand of the
texts. This means that a clear sense of argument, of points being arranged in a logical
order, with ideas moving forward sensibly is much more important than worrying
too much about individual spellings.
Before the examination

Whenever you write an essay:
stions fully and carefully.
t the examiners
want you to do. Questions often have a signifi
you towards needing to think about how an
author is shaping the material in order to get a reader/ audience to respond.
do not wander away from it, however much you want to.
matter how good it is or how ambitious. Practise this so that your plan is an
68
appropriate length for you. Perhaps each word or phrase in your plan should
represent a paragraph that you intend to write.
any mistakes you find.
short, not long to support and illustrate what you
just put them in and move on. If they are there, say something about why they are
relevant: pick on a word, or the tone, for example Poetry and Prose questions
thoroughly.
it need not be much about each writer, so that you can at least
er, you
need to remember that even though it may be tempting to do so, writing about the
links between the set t rewarded. So avoid comments
about this. Focus instead on the text and its effects.
hat the question asks you. According to the Principal
candidates selected carefully from their knowledge to answer
the questions set, specifically and
say, and if the
need for it emerges from the text and the case that you are making. It is very easy to
think that filling in context is what the
the book and
lling in background information without actually
analysing a text in literary terms. This is a mistake.
nounce
that fo have been asked to talk about.
In the examination
Essay questions
before you start to write.
t waste time
saying things that do not directly answer the question.
you say, but

do not waste time
on what it asks.
69
Passage-based questions
-based question, you must be confident that you
know the passage concerned in great detail. Many candidates assume that because
option. It ructure, form

and language. You are not being asked to remember vaguely what was said in class,
you are being asked to consider in detail and you have no excuse because the material
is there and waiting for you.
ing you to do.
Think hard about
techniques and away from general unsupported
points
re that it
is one you recognise and understand
the detail
of the passage, not in from some grand, big idea that you have had.
how the writer is creating effects in the poem/passage.
simply identifying and listing literary devices: it is how they work, and the effects
they create, that matter.
teristic
of other things in the whole text.
your answer must be mostly based on the poem/passage;
whole story or try to write about all the poems in your selection.
Specific A Level demands
At A Level remember that there is one very specific addition to the skills you are
expected to demonstrate. You have to be prepared to talk about texts as being open
to a variety of different interpretations.
You can do this by:
past in
the novel, but he could
However: this requirement does not replace the need for you to express a personal
response, so you should be very careful not to simply present a collection of other
making it clear what you yourself think.
70
In poetry, try to see each poem as part of the whole collection, rather just as isolated
and individual poems, and see what connections or links you can find between them.
It might be useful to draw a chart or a mind map showing clusters of poems, or
or
with others? If so, what do they have in common, and what similarities can you find
in their ideas and styles? What differences are there? What effects do these
similarities and differences create? As you work through each section that you have
chosen, you will find yourself gaining an increasingly strong and confident
understanding of each text, and of how each writer has created them and the effects
and responses that you have noticed. You will be putting together a growing
s methods and concerns, and of how each small part
each word, each phrase, each image, each scene, each chapter contributes to the
whole piece of writing. You may in fact be developing your skills of literary criticism,
and you will certainly be becoming a more confident examination candidate.
71

AS Literature - Paper 1 - Gillian Clarke Poems

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AS Literature - Paper 1 - Gillian Clarke Poems

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AS Level English Literature

Paper 1, Section B: Poetry

[Interview with Barry

characteristics typical of Welsh-language poetry, such as traditional strict metres, into

A further characteristic of her writing, arguably a facet of her traditionalism, is its

childhood, moving between English and Welsh-speaking relatives, is encapsulated

upon home thoughts, as when reflecting upon the water-borne occupation of

Her own youth is now viewed in the conte

From https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poet/18864/Gillian -Clarke/en/tile

A central figure in contemporary Welsh poetry, Clarke was editor of The

Although her poetry is often anchored in a Welsh rural landscape, it is

The air hums with jets.

Making the Beds for the Dead

This emphasis on a continuous interplay between past and present,

The people have always talked.

imagery is rich and instantly evocative in its detail. As Belinda

All day we felt and watched the sun

They said was coming. All the signs

and I'm on fire with my arguments

at your great distance you can calm me still.

and out there

Some general critical observations on Clarke which could be incorporated

Romanticism and in so doing she firmly establishes herself in the realism of a

a Freudian psychoanalytical system of the repressed subconscious. Under the surface of

According to literary critic, Sarah Jane Bentley,

As a poet, it seems as if Clarke constantly practices bricolage, always ready to gather

1. General Comments on language:

e. Tone, atmosphere, mood:

conveying. Concepts such as cultural identity, corruption, feminism,

2. Specific Modes of Speech:

moaned and whined spluttered to a

unusual rhythm and sound. It is often employed to make a sentence or

cacophonous phrase can be loud, abrasive, harsh to the ear. For

k. Paradox: is an apparently absurd or senseless statement which can

contradictory statements, yet all make sense. Paradoxes are used to

m. Oxymoron: also a form of contrast, this is when an author will place

injuries we suffered, the victory was only bitter sweet

o. Euphemism: is an understatement, or a pleasant way of saying

euphemistic way of saying it, in a more formal setting,

p. Innuendo: is a devise whereby a writer or speaker will hint at

r. Dichotomy: this is more of a general term which does not apply

u. Sympathy: is generated when we feel sorry for the characters we have

3. General Stylistic Aspects:

third-person is more omnipotent and we are given a more

observations about an instance or a character which draws emphasis to

General questions already examined by Cambridge:

Contextual questions already examined by Cambridge:

Possible general essay questions which might be examined:

From The Sundial

From Letter from a Far Country

From Selected Poems

Climbing Cader Idris 30

From Letting in the Rumour

Certainly there are white

Complacently I sit, swathed

You ask how it is. I will tell you.

There are no brochure blues or boiled sweet

Chimney hood has decayed away, slowly

I am sitting in the wrong room listening

To her I will represent absolute

I can remember you, child,

Neither won nor lost the struggle

Tightening about my life,

She died on a hot day. In a way