belonging anthology poem notes

low st as ever. just doing top priority rn. yeag. <- this failed use it if you like but it suckssssss

I remember, I remember

TITLE: repetition, formality, sets up nostalgic tones and a personal focus.

FORM + STRUCTURE: -A-A-B-B rhyme scheme, each stanza starting with “I remember, I remember”. Line lengths begin consistent and end strongly varying. Internal rhyme exists in “pool”/”cool”. many exclamatives used. overall euphony early on, cacophany later. lots of endstopping, long rambling sentences used.

LANGUAGE: heavy amelioration throughout. flowers represent purity and innocence, personification of the sun representing childish innocence, glorification of nature + childhood etc. useful quote: ‘I’m farther off from heav’n / Than when I was a boy’.

CONTEXT: prone to illness, romantic/victorian genrewise

Peckham Rye Lane

TITLE - location, London (overstimulating, unpleasant associations).

FORM AND STRUCTURE - highly irregular line lengths and stanza lengths. written in thought form - trains of thought cutting in and out from each other. mix of endstopping and enjambment, quite a lot of caesura giving a more irregular pace.

LANGUAGE - visceral, often using cacophany. ‘gruesome meat’, for example. ‘clutching drumsticks like weapons’ too. negative connotations from warlike semantic field combined with the cacophany gives a negative, overwhelming atmosphere. internal rhyme in ‘seed beads’ and ‘weaves’. Poem of two halves - the first half with cacophany and pejoratives, the final four lines showing PRL in a positive light. Also references William Blake.

CONTEXT: Blakeman lived in Peckham. Poem based on lived experience. Blake was a former Romantic poet who reported seeing angels.

Jamaican British

TITLE: two halves inherent to the title itself, but both presented as even. No determiner. Halves inherently linked.

FORM + STRUCTURE: all couplets. mostly endstopping, lots of caesura. uses internal rhymes (dishes/British, school/hall). short sentences. lots of tricolon

LANGUAGE: jamaican and british always a pair. starting off most often Jamaican British, then …Jamaican/British…, then …Jamaican/…British, and one case of each individually. consistent theme of othering played into itself through the us versus them theme prominent through the poem.

CONTEXT: Antrobus, Jamaican British, poem first person on his experiences.

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