Grandpas Soup by Jackie Kay and The Coming of Yams and Mangoes and Mountain Honey by James Berry. Compare two texts from the anthology which show how food can be associated with memory

James Berry uses a very different form for The Coming of Yams and Mangoes and Mountain Honey; he opts to separate the poem into short stanzas consisting of six lines or less in contrast to the larger stanzas used by Kay in Grandpa’s Soup. Furthermore, Berry chooses to make his lines longer than the length used by Kay in her poem. This contrasting form makes their poems vastly different in conveying the theme of memory. There is however some similarity between the two, throughout his poem, Berry uses little grammar in his stanzas which is similar to Kay’s first stanza in Grandpa’s Soup. The aim of this is to keep the poem flowing and the technique of using an asyndetic list makes this effective, an example being “Breadfruit a green football, congo-peas like tawny pearls, mango soaked in sunrise”. By doing this, Berry keeps the form of his poem flowing and ensuring that it is memorable to read.

 It is also notable that Berry opts to start a new stanza each time the poem moves to a new topic. For example, in the first stanza he is dwelling on the dullness of London and how it is different to the Caribbean and as soon as he switches onto remembering the scenery and food of home, he starts a new stanza. Berry’s form & structure is a lot less complicated than Kay’s, revolving around the short, separate stanzas that are easy to read and have a flow that is quick and memorable for the reader.

The purpose of both poems is to convey the theme of memory through food which both do effectively, using separate memories, with Kay doing it through her grandfather’s soup and Berry through the food from his Caribbean homeland. Arguably the poems do this to great effect as they are filled with poetic and literary techniques to create a vivid imagery of what they are describing. The use of such techniques, I believe attract their audience. The audience of the poems in my view are wide ranging as anyone can read a poem if they so wish, but specifically Kay’s poem would attract middle-aged Scots who would have similar memories of spending time with their grandfather’s as children while Berry’s would attract people from the Caribbean, especially Caribbean immigrants to other nations, specifically London whose number have risen since time of Berry’s childhood. Overall, both poems in my view would be received well by the audience, especially the specific kinds of people as mentioned earlier as they would evoke memories of the past from the audience themselves due to the vivid imagery and theme of the poems.

While the purpose, reception and audience remain similar, how the poets decide to convey their shared theme of memory is different. They use various different techniques to accomplish this. In Grandpa’s Soup, Kay uses similes such as “like a rich island in the middle of the soup sea” and “No one makes soup like my grandpa’s” and metaphors such as “its diced carrots the perfect size” and “its diced potatoes the perfect size” to provide solid and memorable descriptors and imagery of memory. Furthermore Kay uses onomatopoeia with words such as “och”, “hough” and “loch” which also double as rhyming couplets when used by Kay. Uses of both these techniques are effective at conveying memory and make them stick in the mind of the reader, in addition to the repetition Kay uses in her structure. In terms of word classes, which in my view are the most crucial part of the poem, Kay opts to use nouns such as “Grandpa”, “rich”, “sea” and “world” to create imagery of a child’s imagination when she is watching her grandfather make the soup, also using personification in this respect within the line “like a rich island in the middle of the soup sea” giving images of indulgence from the noun “rich” and a vast amount of soup from the noun “sea”. Kay also uses adjectives such as “perfect”, “glorious” and “best” to describe her grandfather’s soup in positive terms and evoke positive memories and feelings from the audience. The childhood feelings of Kay who is desperate for her grandfather’s soup are also described by using verbs such as “pine”, “need” and “avoid” to display how good the soup is and again to evoke feelings and memories from the reader.

Berry uses a lot more imagery and techniques than Kay to convey the theme of memory. He uses similes such as “Open up papaw like pumpkin you get”, “Just hold black molasses like honey” and “congo-peas like tawny pearls” to put strong imagery in the readers mind about the food he remembers from the Caribbean. Metaphors are also used to convey this imagery such as “Coconuts are big brown O’s”, “colours of sun stalled in groups” and “melons too smooth to be pineapples”. Furthermore, Berry uses a lot of personification when describing the food such as “sun drew stripes on fish” and “mints and onions quarrel” to give the food human characteristics that the reader can relate to. Berry’s use of word classes is the most important part of evoking vivid imagery which is especially important in this poem as Caribbean food has many contrasting colours and tastes which is important for Berry to distinguish, especially for his audience. He uses nouns such as “London”, “Caribbean” and “market” to give distinction between the various settings in the poem. He also opts to use adjectives such as “brightness”, “fleshy”, “tawny” and “squinting” to give description of the various Caribbean foods and make them bright, vivid and memorable for the reader. Finally, his use of verbs such as “cooing” and “drops” gives some personal element to the poem and makes the reader feel as if they are actually with Berry in the Caribbean which is an effective use of word classes to evoke this from the reader.