The poem Poppies was wriiten by Jane Weir who is an award winning poet born in 1963 with English and Italian decent. The poem is set on armistice sunday which is a day used to mark the end of world war 1. During the time Poppies was written their was a lot of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq with lots of British Soldiers dying which meant that lots of poets were asked to make poems based around rememberance. The poet also took inspiration from her textiles business as she makes consistent references to it throughout the poem.
Structurally the poem is very organised with four clear stanzas. Although when the poem is more closely analysed you can see that the individual stanzas are less organised and the way it written gives it an inner dialog like feel when read aloud. This is because tgere is a strong presence of commas in the text. The poem also goes against a lot of similar poems that oftem include rhyme or at least a strong sense of rhythm.
The poem is based around a mothers changing emotion as her child goes into war and eventually dies. It is unique because the mother is speaking to the son however the son is changing throughout the poem as he leaves for war and dies. The poem has a sorrowful tone fitting the mournfull state of mind of the mother as she talks to the son and watches him going through his life. The poem is very effective at generating sorrow because it is easy to relate to as it is understandable that the mother would be going through a high amount of pain as her son goes to war and dies.
Jain Weir is able to weave in her textile expertose by blending in words with connotations of war with words refering to materials and textiles for example “spasms of paper red, disrupting a blockade of yellow bias binding around your blazer.” Which uses words like blockade and spasms but also talks about bias binding.
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