Revising Poetry From Other Cultures

Unrelated Incidents

and

Half-Caste

Explain yuself

Wha yu mean

When yu say half-caste

Yu mean tchaicovsky

Sit down at dah piano

An mix a black key

wid a white key

Is a half caste symphony/

… this

is my trooth

yooz doant no

thi trooth

yirselz cawz

yi canny talk

right. This is

the six a clock

nyooz. belt up.

Annotate the poems for the following:

• Attitudes and feelings – the tone or mood of the poem, what point is the poet making?

• Structure – Layout, rhyme, enjambment, development of story…

• Language – metaphor/simile, dialect, vocabulary, alliteration, assonance…

• Personal reaction – What do you think of the poem and why?

• Remember that for each of these points, if you do not explain the EFFECT of the feature you pick out, you cannot gain above a D grade.

Half-Caste: Main points• The poem is a direct challenge to the reader’s

preconceptions, ‘Explain yuself’.• The tone is sarcastic from the outset, ‘Excuse

me/standing on one leg’.• The narrator goes on to explore how some of the

most beautiful things in the world come from a mixture of colours.

• The argument moves on to state that by calling someone ‘half caste’ implies that they are not whole ‘Ah listening to you wid de keen/half of mih ear’.

• The poem closes by implying that anyone who disagrees is not thinking with ‘de whole of yu mind’, and to come back tomorrow with an open mind.

• Structure reflects subject as many of the lines seem to be split in half with enjambment, reflecting the feelings of the narrator.

• Language, like the narrator himself, is a mixture of standard English and Caribbean Creole dialect and spelling.

• Use of imagery again reflects the mixture of colours, to make something beautiful: ‘when picasso/mix red an green/is a half-caste canvas’.

Unrelated Incidents

• Narrator’s tone is angry and bitter ‘belt up’, pointing out that the way some talks (accent) does not make them better or worse than everyone else.

• Structured like an autocue, reflecting the theme of the poem.

• Language is phonetic, written in a Scots accent, reflecting the way ‘wanna yoo scruff’ talks. Writing this way rebels against standard English, pointing out that this is not necessarily the best way to write.