lit paper 1- set text poetry

context for all poems in the set text booklet

sonnet 43

by Elizabeth Barret Browning

• she secretly married Robert Browning at 39

• deeply religious

• feminist

• romantic

the prelude

by William Wordsworth

• poems published post-humously

• loved nature

• romantic

london

by William Blake

• supported French revolution

• believed in equality

• gave a voice to those who can’t speak

as imperceptively as grief

by Emily Dickinson

• was published post-humously

• her poems are restricted to her experiances

• never married (suspectedly gay)

• romantic

death of a naturalist

by Seamus Heaney

• grows up Catholic in Northern Ireland

• grew up in Londonderry later on in life

she walks in beauty

by Lord Byron

• described as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know‘

• politician and poet

• died at age 36

• this is NOT a love poem

ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

• kicked out for Oxford in 1811 for promoting atheism

• drowned age 29

• friends with Lord Byron

a wife in london

by Thomas Hardy

• written during the Boer War

• supported the Boers during that war

to autumn

by John Keats

• got famous after death

• parents died when young

the soldier

by Rupert Brooke

• got bitten by an infected mosquito on the ship to war

• early-war written- doesn’t include war horrors

• neo-romantic

hawk roosting

by Ted Hughes

• focused on the juxtaposition of beauty and violence in nature

• the ‘hawk‘ is based on an authoritive figure like Hitler

afternoons

by Philip Larkin

• always been a librarian through whole life

• never married- had relations with married women but never settled down with anyone

manhunt

by Simon Armitage

• about Eddie Beddows who was a UN peacekeeper during the Bosnian war

• written from Eddie’s wife- Laura’s perspective

mametz wood

by Owen Sheers

• welsh division had 4000 men die in Mametz Wood

• during the battle of the Somme

ducle et decorum est

by Wilifred Owen

• written during World War 1

• he served in the war and died 7 days before the end of the war

• arguing with Jessie Pope about whether war is good

living space

by Imtiaz Dharker

• grew up in Pakistan and Scotland

• written about the slums in Mumbai, India

cosy apologia

by Rita Dove

• tribute to her husband

• during hurricane Floyd

• feels guilty to be safe inside while the hurricane kills/ destroys

valentine

by Carol Ann Duffy

• dramatic monologue

• openly gay