Compare and contrast the way Wales and its people are portrayed in the poems 'Toast' by Sheenagh Pugh and 'Some Christmas Haiku' by Peter Finch.I am going to be discussing comparisons and differences between the two poems.

I don’t think that there are many comparisons between the poem ‘Toast’ and the poem ‘Some Christmas haiku’. The only comparisons I can find are the fact that they have welsh relevance, I know this because it mentions Cardiff’s streets in ‘Toast’, ‘Westgate Street, St.John’s’ and in the poem ‘Some Christmas Haiku’ it mentions the word ‘Nadolig’ more than once. The other comparison I can find is the fact that they are both modern. I think this about the poem ‘Toast’ because the only Stadium that is in Cardiff is the Millennium Stadium and it was built for the year 2000. I think that the poem ‘Some Christmas Haiku’ is modern because 100 years ago people went to church, they didn’t used to have cars to burn out ‘light of a wrecked car burning’. In my opinion there are only a couple of differences between the two poems. My first difference is that ‘Toast’ is a positive poem and ‘Some Christmas Haiku’ is a negative poem. I think that ‘Some Christmas Haiku’ is a negative poem because it says of all the things we could be enjoying over the Christmas period the only thing we have left is the Christmas card image ‘On the moors the snow caught by grass no one to see it’, there’s only one positive thing to look at over Christmas and there are a few negative things like ’a man in a Santa suit three women smoking’, this is negative because it tells us people are making fun of Christmas, they’re not celebrating it the right way. Another difference I found between the two poems is that ‘Toast’ is set in the summer and ‘Some Christmas Haiku’ is set in the winter.

The poem ‘Some Christmas Haiku’ is about what Christmas like now. When I read the first two lines I thought this is going to be a positive poem ‘On the moors the snow caught by grass’. These two lines are the only positive points of the poem. This poem puts stuff in perspective of what Christmas has become ‘sound of retching three men in an empty street crushing lager cans’ people are taking the excuse of it being Christmas to socialise and drink more, jut because its Christmas. There’s a very strong Haiku in the poem, which shows us that Peter Finch doesn’t care much about Wales ‘Nadolig Heddwch half of Wales don’t care other half can’t pronounce it’ this tells us what Peter Finch really thinks about Wales, he thinks that we don’t care about the welsh language and we don’t care if we can’t pronounce it. At the end of the poem it tells us although Peter Finch is very negative about Christmas he will probably celebrate Christmas the same way next year,’ Sod dolig this bunt, mmm do it dunnit, don matter do it again’ he There are a few Christmas images in this poem there are four negative ones and one positive one. The positive image is at the start of the poem ‘0n the moors the snow caught by grass’, the negative images are ‘in the chapel old wood after so many years still shining’, ‘outside the building society a man in a Santa suit and three women smoking’. In my opinion this tells me that Peter Finch wants to give us a message that people in Wales are celebrating Christmas the wrong way. Toast also has some images in its poem of the builders, ‘young builders lay golden and melting on hot pavements’, ‘vast concrete-and-glass mother-ship’, these are both images of the Millennium Stadium when it was being built and after it was built. The meaning of Christmas now is presents and the turkey dinner, not many people celebrate Christmas in the right way anymore, people go to church on Christmas day, most people stay in their house having a turkey dinner an opening Christmas presents.