Revising Poetry From Other Cultures

1. Revising Poetry From Other Cultures Unrelated Incidents and Half-Caste

2. Explain yuself Wha yu mean When yu say half-caste Yu mean tchaicovsky Sit down at dah piano An mix a black key wid a white key Is a half caste symphony/

3. … this is my trooth yooz doant no thi trooth yirselz cawz yi canny talk right. This is the six a clock nyooz. belt up.

4. Annotate the poems for the following: • Attitudes and feelings – the tone or mood of the poem, what point is the poet making? • Structure – Layout, rhyme, enjambment, development of story… • Language – metaphor/simile, dialect, vocabulary, alliteration, assonance… • Personal reaction – What do you think of the poem and why? • Remember that for each of these points, if you do not explain the EFFECT of the feature you pick out, you cannot gain above a D grade.

5. Half-Caste: Main points • The poem is a direct challenge to the reader’s preconceptions, ‘Explain yuself’. • The tone is sarcastic from the outset, ‘Excuse me/standing on one leg’. • The narrator goes on to explore how some of the most beautiful things in the world come from a mixture of colours. • The argument moves on to state that by calling someone ‘half caste’ implies that they are not whole ‘Ah listening to you wid de keen/half of mih ear’. • The poem closes by implying that anyone who disagrees is not thinking with ‘de whole of yu mind’, and to come back tomorrow with an open mind.

6. Structure reflects subject as many of the lines seem to be split in half with enjambment, reflecting the feelings of the narrator. • Language, like the narrator himself, is a mixture of standard English and Caribbean Creole dialect and spelling. • Use of imagery again reflects the mixture of colours, to make something beautiful: ‘when picasso/mix red an green/is a half-caste canvas’.

7. Unrelated Incidents • Narrator’s tone is angry and bitter ‘belt up’, pointing out that the way some talks (accent) does not make them better or worse than everyone else. • Structured like an autocue, reflecting the theme of the poem. • Language is phonetic, written in a Scots accent, reflecting the way ‘wanna yoo scruff’ talks. Writing this way rebels against standard English, pointing out that this is not necessarily the best way to write.