‘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 across.
There is also a large amount of metaphorical language used in ‘Half-caste’ such as “wha yu mean when yu say half-caste, yu mean when Picasso mix red an green” This means that why do people refer to half-caste as a negative thing, when Picasso mixed red and green he was seen as great, not inferior. ‘Unrelated incidents’ does not use much metaphorical language in his poem maybe because he just wanted the people to listen to his message plainly and simply and not give them to much time to think. We can also support that he did not want to give the readers or listeners to much time to think because of the lack of stanza breaks displayed in the poem, whereas ‘Half-caste’ contains quite a large break to allow people to think about what he is trying to say.
‘Half-caste’ is set out in such a way, as you would normally speak in order to give you some idea of the way and speed he is actually talking at. However ‘Unrelated incidents’ is set out in the format of an auto-cue in order to give you the impression of fast speaking and lots of information in a short space.
The tones of both poems are serious but they do also both have some aspect of humour in them. For example ‘Unrelated incidents’ is trying to make fun of the BBC newsreaders for the way that they talk and that they don’t talk in they’re own accents and ‘Half-caste’ mentions the British weather as being overcast to compare it to the half-caste people. Both poems also contain a distinct lack of punctuation, especially ‘Unrelated incidents’, this may be once again because he wanted it read fast and he wanted it to be to the point.
In conclusion both poems are very similar in the way of punctuation and the phonetic way of writing used but they are very different in the way that one poem leaves the reader time to think about what he has said and the other is made to be read fast and directly to the point. Also the metaphorical language used is very different due to on poem having a huge amount of metaphors but the poem also has stanza breaks to allow you time to think about what he has said and the other poem has virtually no metaphors of any description.