Poetry From Other Cultures.

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Poetry From Other Cultures

I am going to compare the two poems ‘Half-caste’ by John Agard and ‘Unrelated Incidents’ by Tom Leonard. I will compare the two poems and state what they mean and what the poets are attempting to say. The first poem ‘Half-caste’ is about someone who is trying to explain what some people think that half-caste is but he has taken a humorous but serious tone to writing the poem. The Second poem ‘Unrelated incidents’ is someone attempting to make fun of the BBC newsreaders by speaking as a newsreader but in his own Scottish accent instead of Received Pronunciation (a neutral accent).

Firstly the languages used in both poems are written phonetically, this means that they are not written in ‘text book English’. For example in ‘Unrelated incidents’ one of the lines said ‘way ti spell’ which means the way to spell and likewise in ‘Half-caste’ he writes ‘wha yu mean’ which means what do you mean. Each poem is spoken in a different type of phonetic accent but it can be clearly seen that each poem was meant to be written in the native languages of the authors.

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‘Half-caste’ relies on the readers sense of imagination because he is trying to get across the point that the famous people that he mentions such as Picasso mixed two colours and they were seen as great artists but when people refer to half-caste’s they refer to them as seeming to be not a full person and do not treat them with the respect of a ‘full person’. However ‘Unrelated incidents’ does not rely on the reader having any sense of imagination because it only requires you to listen to be able to understand the message he is trying to put ...

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