'A Contrasting Pair' - The two poems 'Not My Business' and 'This Room' are both from the different cultures topic.

In ‘This Room’, the ideas put across are that of revolution and freedom. In the first paragraph “The room is breaking out of itself”, this could be described as metaphorical escape. You get the impression that the room was once oppressed but the poem does not actually give an indication to who or what the oppressor was. In the third paragraph, you read about the rooms objects celebrating the now given freedom. The objects no longer have fixed positions and boundaries they have been given energy and life. You get the feeling that their potential energy has been released. The poem is evocative and makes you feel happy and excited. The poem also includes sensory excitement, when it describes the crowd of various strong smelling and interesting vegetables. It makes you think of the smells and tastes of them and adds to the excitement of the poem.

There is quite a wide range of language used in ‘Not My Business’ whereas in ‘This Room’ the range of language used is quite select. The first poem uses personification in the first paragraph “And stuffed him down the belly of a waiting jeep”; this sentence gives you a feeling that the jeep is a big, angry, greedy animal. It uses personification again in the last paragraph by giving the house a human form. This encourages you to be more involved in the poem by giving you a better mental image. The poem also uses an onomatopoeia in the word “knock”; this is a word that sounds like what it is. The harsh sound at the end of the word reflects the knock sound. Another technique used was alliteration in the text “ hungry hand” the writer used this because the sound creates a real feel of hunger. The words make a hollow sound making you think of an empty stomach, low energy, and slow delayed movements.

The poem ‘This Room’ does not use as much language techniques as the other poem but uses two of the same as it did. It uses a lot of personification, one example is “ A room breaking free” This gives the room a feeling of being alive and escaping from the mundane. In the first paragraph, it says “Cracking through its own walls” this is an onomatopoeia. The cracking sound gives you the idea of the room hatching or being re-born.

The structures of both poems are very different. The poem ‘This Room’ has a fast rhythm or beat whereas ‘Not My Business’ has a slow rhythm. I think this is because the poem ‘This Room’ is about happiness and freedom that a fast beat tends to reflect. The other poem is about the complete opposite and is slow which is related to sadness. In ‘This Room’, the structure uses enjambment; when one line “ pots and pans bang together in celebration” crosses two stanzas. I think the writer has used this here to emphasise the word celebrating. He wants the fact that the objects are celebrating to be emphasised. A happy feeling is given to the poem. The stanzas are all different lengths in this poem but the stanzas in ‘Not My Business’ are mostly the same length but are very slow and repetitive.

Overall, I think the poems area contrasting pair. They are complete opposites in their meaning but use some of the same language techniques to get the meaning across.