Carol Ann Duffy uses the theme of growing up in her poem 'In Mrs Tilscher's Class'. She starts off by setting the first stanza in a class in a primary school. She uses 'you could travel up the Blue Nile with your finger

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English Coursework

How poets betray growing up in their poems.

Carol Ann Duffy uses the theme of growing up in her poem 'In Mrs Tilscher's Class'. She starts off by setting the first stanza in a class in a primary school. She uses 'you could travel up the Blue Nile with your finger, tracing the route while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery. Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum. Aswan'. This quite obviously tells us that she teaching the young, ambitious class with a globe, again referring back to the classroom scenery as most primary school classrooms have globes. Then she says 'That for an hour, then a skittle of milk and the chalky pyramids rubbed into dust'. Here, Carol Ann Duffy is showing that when the geography lesson has finished and the children have had a break they simply forget about what they've been taught. She also refers back to the geography with chalky pyramids. This stanza basically emphasising the happiness of the children at that age.

'This was better than home. Enthralling books. The classroom glowed like a sweetshop'. This is the opening two lines of the second stanza again showing the happiness and excitement of the children. 'Better