In the poems 'Jac Codi Baw' and 'East Moors' Gillian Clarke writes about the demolition of particular buildings and is able to create a strong sense of place. Write about each poem and explore the effect the events have on individuals and the community.

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In the poems 'Jac Codi Baw' and 'East Moors' Gillian Clarke writes about the demolition of particular buildings and is able to create a strong sense of place. Write about each poem and explore the effect the events have on individuals and the community.

Gillian Clarke is a female poet. She was born in Cardiff in 1937. She is one of the most popular Welsh poets of today. I will be looking at two poems, which are both written by Gillian Clarke, they are 'Jac Codi Baw' and 'East Moors'. Both of these poems describe the demolition of a building, in each poem Clarke explores the effects the events have on individuals and the community.

In the poem 'Jac Codi Baw' Clarke describes an incident in her life. The title itself is Welsh and it literally means 'Jack raises the dirt'. People started using this phrase as a nickname for the massive earth-moving machine, which has the letters J.C.B.

This particular poem is about the destruction of a building. The overall theme of this poem is 'change' and Clarke carefully describes her reaction to this change. In this poem Clarke shows a lot of emotions, her anger and hatred to the people that were in charge of the demolition of this building and her shock at how quickly it was torn down.

Overall the poet deals with transience, which is the passing of time. In the first stanza Clarke describes how fast the demolition was and in the second stanza Clarke describes how the J.C.B driver does not care and how we are the ones who are killing buildings. The building is symbolic, because the buildings are a piece of history and they are part of our lives. She makes this clear by saying 'Blood on our hands' which makes us think that we have committed murder.

The building is valuable to her as she is Welsh and so is the building. She takes it very personally, by saying 'Inside the car dust lies, grit in my eyes, in my hair' by saying this Clarke draws my attention to the fact that the building is ruined, and so is she, she gives the impression that she likes the old Wales as it is and doesn't want it to change, she shows this by saying 'the handwriting of a city will be erased' by this phrase Clarke means the structure of the place, all the buildings side by side are the handwriting of the City but by demolishing a building the hand writing of the City is being erased. The building is a piece of this cities history and identity.

Clarke writes her poem in such a way that it seems like the building that was demolished is alive, by using personification, for example, 'windows blind with boarding' Clarke used this phrase to make the reader think that the building is a person or individual and she says,'blood, smoky with ghosts, which suggests that the building is old and haunted, but its alive.

Clarke is shocked by this dramatic change because she goes shopping and by the time she comes back she is amazed to see the building she parked her car next to has turned to a pile of bricks and wood, she says 'they have torn down in the space of time it takes to fill a shopping bag' this shows us how fast it took to demolish this building, and this tells us how easy it was to erase the cities hand writing. Clarke doesn't mind natural change of the building by the weather and by age, she says ' we are used to the slow change that weather brings, the gradual death of a generation, old bricks crumbling' it is like us killing the old people because they are the old generation and they have gone crumbly and they are of no use to us, but she is astonished to see the destruction of this building.
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The first sentence in the second stanza is 'He doesn't care' which strikes me, the reader. Here Clarke is talking about the J.C.B driver and how he doesn't care about the demolition of the building. It is just his job, he was told to do it and nobody can stop him. It is a normal everyday thing to him; 'It's a joke to him' by using this phrase Clarke shows how the J.C.B driver has a complete opposite feelings to her. She is very angry at what has happened, but he is simply finding it as a joke. ...

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