Look at three poems and their different cultures during my English lessons.

I am now going to begin analysing the second poem, ‘Overheard in County Sligo’ by Gillian Clark. This is about how she is fed up of her life, and she would rather be someone famous. It is also about how she realises that her life could be a lot worse than what it is. All through this poem the rhyming scheme uses the 2nd and 4th lines. In the first stanza she says how she has married a man, and how she lives “at the back of beyond”. She describes her home as being away from everything. Gillian also says how she has animals where she lives. In the 2nd stanza she describes the corn blowing in the wind as “caught up by its corners and shaken”. In my mind this gives a beautiful picture of a rippling effect that the corn has when it is blown in the wind. In this stanza she also says how she can easily get away from her life, as “freedom’s there for the taking”. It is in the third stanza where she says how she wanted to be famous, and amaze people by stilling “the crowd with a look”. She basically tells us that’s she would rather be famous, than follow the life she has now. In the 4th stanza, she stops her dream with a “but”, and she then says how her life really is. In the third line she describes the rooms as “tumbled”, she is trying to say they have been turned over, they’re messy. Then in the 4th line she spots her reflection in a glass, and thinks of how hard her life could be. In stanza five, she decides that’s her life isn’t all bad, as she has everything provided for her. Gillian changes her tone, and she is now happy that she lives “in the back of beyond”. In this poem she repeats the first two and last two lines, but they are written in different tones of voice. I think that the best part of this poem was when she described the corn being “caught up by its corners and shaken”.

I am now going to compare the similarities and differences between the two poems; I will start by comparing the similarities. Both of the poems are written by women in the country. They are also both describing how hard their lives are and how they want to get away. Gillian shows this by saying, “freedom’s there for the taking”, while Maya says “storm, blow me from here”. The two women both use metaphors in their poems, Maya with the use of snowflakes giving her “cold icy kisses”, and Gillian with the use of the corn, being “caught up by its corners and shaken”. A final similarity is that they both talk about their families in their poems. Maya talks about she has “children to tend” and “tots to dress”, where Gillian talks about how she “married the man from County Roscommon”. I will now show the differences between the two poems. One is that they are from different cultures, Maya is from South America, while Gillian is from Ireland. Another is the range of different jobs they have, Maya’s first stanza is a long list of her jobs, Gillian Clarke only shows a few of them in her fourth stanza. ‘Woman Work’ is an almost fantasy world with the use of the elements of the weather, whereas ‘Overheard in County Sligo’ is a more realistic way of escape, “the road runs down through the open gate”. A final difference is that Gillian uses repetition in her poem, but Maya doesn’t.

After my analysis of the two poems I understand them both better, and even though I only analysed two of the three I liked ‘Overheard in County Sligo’ better. I liked picturing the “tumbled” rooms and the scenery around the house; I especially liked how she finds her “face in a glass”. I think these three women are right in what they are saying, as in most households it is the women who are expected to do the most work around the house.