Poppies

AO1 respond to texts critically and imaginatively; select and evaluate relevant textual detail to illustrate and support interpretations

Jane Weir reading her own poem

AO2 explain how language, structure and form contribute to writers’ presentation of ideas, themes and settings

The poem is called 'Poppies' which links to the wearing of the poppy on Remembrance Sunday which is referred to in the poem by 'Three days before Armistice Sunday'.  This reference might link the poem to World War 1 which is where the idea of the poppy as a remembrance flower came from or to all succeeding wars which are commemorated on Armistice Sunday (the nearest Sunday to 11th November each year).

Structure: 


The poem has four irregular stanzas and does not have a fixed rhyme scheme but at times does have limited rhyme (graze my nose/across the tip of your nose/play at being Eskimos) and the end rhyme of tree/me/busy in stanza three giving a sense of the persona being 'led' from the bedroom to the churchyard. 

Generally, we would say that the lines use enjambment to lead through the poem but often there are caesuras mid-line (commas or fullstops) which stops the flow of the poem.  The effect could be that on the surface the mother is calm but is broken and stopped up inwardly by her sorrow.

There is a sense of the passing of time in the poem 'Three days before Armistice Sunday' ... 'Before you Left' ... 'After you'd gone' ... 'Later' ... 'this is where it has led me'. 

Language

Metaphor - clothing as a metaphor: 'lapel', 'blazer','Selloptape bandaged around my hand/ I rounded up as many cat hairs as I could', 'smoothed down your shirt's upturned collar' for the care for her son. Her inability to tell him how she feels 'all my words flattened, rolled, turned into felt'. Also for her anguish: 'my stomach busy making tucks, darts, pleats' and her carelessness for her own well-being after he's gone 'hat-less, without a winter coat or reinforcements of scarf, gloves.'.

Semantic field of war - 'blockade', 'bandaged', 'single dove', 'reinforcements' and 'war memorial'.

Metaphor - 'the gelled blackthorns of your hair'

Simile - 'leaned against it like a wishbone'

Childhood - 'like we did when you were little' and 'hoping to hear your playground voice catching on the wind'

Death - 'individual war graves', 'skirting the church yard walls' and 'war memorial'

Birds - 'released a song bird from its cage', 'a single dove flew from the pear tree' and 'the dove pulled freely against the sky, an ornamental stitch'.

Alternative interpretations: is the son dead? Could we see the poem in more than one way?

Conflict between mother's love and son's need to grow up 'treasure chest', 'intoxicated', 'resisted the impulse'.
AO3 make comparisons and explain links between texts, evaluating writers’ different ways of expressing meaning and achieving effects

Consider other poems that refer to nature, grief, children, death.

AO4 relate texts to their social, cultural and historical contexts; explain how texts have been influential and significant to self and other readers in different contexts and at different times

This poem was written by Jane Weir a modern poet who says she was influenced by Wilfred Owen's mother.  However, it appears to be set in a modern conflict rather than in World War 1 as it refers to more modern items such as 'sellotape'.  The conflict is not referred to explicitly, maybe meaning that this is a timeless feeling for mothers who have lost their sons to war. 

Jane Weir herself is a modern poet and textiles artist who utilises her textiles knowledge in her poetry.