Discuss the way that Fanthorpe creates and uses characters in her poetry - 'You will be hearing from us shortly' and 'Telephone conversation'.

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“Sophie Distefano 11Bcbe”

U.A.Fanthorpe

Using any two or three of the poems you have studied, discuss the way that Fanthorpe creates and uses characters in her poetry.

In this essay I will be talking about the poems ‘You will be hearing from us shortly’ and ‘Telephone conversation’. All of the poems that we have read from her collection are about different cultures, society’s, ways of life, and just basically people in general. Her poems are all very similar in her way of thinking and how she sees things in one typical point of view. She seems very set in her ways and very stereotypical when she talks about people in society; She is very critical and seems, despite her broad minded take on things, very fascist in the ways that she views different issues. Despite being a minor poet, Fanthorpe seems to have a major yearning for power, and so uses it in quite a few of her poems to enhance some of the points she has made. This search for power may have come from an experience that she has been through in her earlier lifetime, or it may just be the way she likes to write. Most of her poems have roles which take on a huge power, of which is mainly used to belittle others.

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    Both of the poems that I am writing about are about being interviewed for either a job or a flat. In both poems, Fanthorpe uses very formal, strict language with a very blunt and patronising tone; I think this is to illustrate the feeling of terror in the interviewee, because as Fanthorpe shows us, interviews can be very unpleasant and very dis-regarding if you are not up to a certain standard that they expect you to be.

The poem ‘Telephone conversation’ is obviously a very typical Fanthorpe piece because it has the usual Fanthorpe ‘features’; The patronising ...

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