Ballad of Birmingham
(a) Describe the irony of the situation in the poem.
(b) How effectively do you see the form of the poem as heightening its meaning?
In the poem “Ballad of Birmingham” written in 1969, Dudley Randall chooses to tell the story of the war in Birmingham, Alabama through the eyes of a mother and her child. He chose to tell their story in the form of a ballad, as ballads are poems that can tell a story. A ballad also has a fixed rhythm and rhyme which makes it useful when telling a story and it makes it easier to understand and remember.
The first opening stanzas of the ballad is a speech between the mother and her young daughter. From the first four stanzas, we find out that the child wants to go out and ‘march the streets of Birmingham’ rather than go out to play with her friends. This can show how important the freedom march is to her and how the war has led to children to be more committed to their countries than the adults as the mother forbids her to go whilst the young child tells her mother that she won’t be alone as ‘other children will go with me’.
It is somehow ironic that a young child would be more concerned of the freedom of her country than her mother, an adult. It is even more surprising that children would be going to the freedom march ‘to make our [their] country free’ and the adults don’t. This can show that the children are more committed to changing their country for the better and that they are at least attempting to change their own futures.
Throughout the speech, the daughter is trying to persuade her mother to let her go out and march the streets of Birmingham. The mother repeats ‘No, baby, no, you may not go’ but she finally gives in and lets her, saying that ‘you may go to church instead’ meaning she will let her child go but not to the freedom march as she thinks that the church, a religious and holy place, would not be a place where there would be bombings and danger. It is ironic that she lets her child out after saying ‘no, you may not go’ twice. Ironically, it is also the church that gets bombed and not the freedom march where the child originally wanted to go. Randall could be trying to show that you have to fight for your right and for what you believe instead of waiting for it to just happen by itself.
