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Summary Poems of the Decade A level revision
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Revision document for the poems for the Edexcel A level English Literature exam from the 'Poems of the Decade' anthology
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Poems of the DecadeContents
Jasmine
Anna
Emily
Alfie
1. Eat Me - Patience Agbabi
2. Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass - Simon Armitage Mocks
3. Material - Ros Barber Mocks
4. History - John Burnside Class
5. An Easy Passage - Julia Copus
6. The Deliverer - Tishani Doshi
7. The Lammas Hireling - Ian Duhig
8. To My Nine-Year-Old Self - Helen Dunmore Other class
9. A Minor Role - U A Fanthorpe
10. The Gun - Vicki Feaver
11. The Furthest Distances I’ve Travelled - Leontia Flynn
12. Giuseppe - Roderick Ford
13. Out of the Bag - Seamus Heaney
14. Effects - Alan Jenkins Other Class
15. Genetics - Sinead Morrissey
16. From the Journal of a Disappointed Man - Andrew Motion Class
17. Look We Have Coming to Dover! - Daljit Nagra Class
18. Please Hold - Ciaran O-Driscoll Other Class
19. On Her Blindness - Adam Thorpe
20. Ode on a Grayson Perry Urn - Tim Turnbull
Template
Summary / Title Context
Themes Tone
Language Techniques
Structure & Form
Key Quote(s)
, Eat Me – Patience Agbabi
Summary / Title Context
A dysfunctional relationship where the man Focus on fat and a woman’s body- media pressure
encourages her to eat and eat until she suffocates on women
(and eats?) him Adipophilia = fat fetish
Dramatic monologue which examines an extremely
unhealthy relationship of a wife and husband. The
man is the feeder who physically and mentally
dominates the wife, resulting in her rolling over in
bed and suffocating him to death.
TITLE:
o The food that is speaking to the woman =
she is the passive responder to a command?
o Could represent the woman feeding OR the
man consuming her identity
Themes Tone
Power & Control: Power fundamental to the ‘feeder’ Flat and accepting, suggesting the routine of the
relationship. Objectification & possession. dysfunctional relationship is so embedded in the
Revenge women she has no will to express anger
Gender: Man overpowering a woman, but this is Withdrawn, submissive
reversed by the end. Body imagery is solely based Neutral, detached tone – emotionally numb = her
on the female, reflecting stereotypical attitudes own feelings are sacrificed as part of his
towards the subject objectification of her
o Society focuses more on women’s bodies
than men’s?
Transgression & Taboo: idea of a ‘feeder’ role linked
to sexual ideas. Discussion of the female body in a
grotesque way.
Language Techniques
Alliteration “fast food” fricative alliteration shows smooth flow, control
Language describing the woman’s body (“forbidden fruit”, “breadfruit”, “desert island”, “globe”, “Tidal
wave”) suggests a post-colonial viewpoint in which the colonial authority (the man) is ultimately
overwhelmed by the power of the former colony. A colonised subject (the woman) has become too big for
the coloniser (the man) and so leads to the coloniser’s destruction
o Also: “forbidden fruit” – Biblical language of sin, “desert island” – entrapment, “beached whale” –
helplessness and immobility
Transition from solid to liquid (“desert island”, “Beached whale” to “tidal wave” and flesh which “flowed”) =
dissolution of identity. Could also reflect her giving up on herself/ fighting back (becoming weaker)?
o BUT “tidal wave” – destructive force of nature = secret strength within? Foreshadows the end when
he “drowned” in her flesh (furthers imagery of liquid)
Structure & Form
10 tercets rigid form represents strict control imposed by the man/ society on women more generally
Enjambment = sense of never-ending cycle of abuse
Half-rhyme scheme of ABA = each line highly controlled, appropriate for a poem about conformity and
expectations
Use of half-rhymes creates a believable speaking voice and suggests tension in relationship (e.g. “cake” and
“weight”)
End-stopped final line of each stanza (exception of S6) = control by man
Key Quote(s)
“When I hit thirty, he bought me a cake… a candle for each stone in weight”
o Initially appears to be a birthday celebration, but is actually about weight (creates unsettling feeling
of perversion) – a BMI of 30 is the threshold for clinical obesity (poem also has 30 lines – defined
entirely by it)
“The icing was white but the letters were pink, they said, EAT ME.”
o Bitterly ironic twist on childhood naivety of Alice in Wonderland reference – Alice grows when she
eats the cake, suggestion of fantasy – the man is imposing his fantasy on her life and body
“I like big girls, soft girls”
o Objectification of the woman
o Repetition of amorphous group of ‘girls’, rather than ‘woman’ = reduces her to a child, someone
without agency who is there to gratify him = patronising
o Defined entirely by her weight and the sum of her parts – “belly”, “hips”, “chins”, “cellulite”
o Wants to “burrow inside” the woman – parasitical
“he asked me to get up and walk round the bed so he could watch…”
o Biblical parable in which Jesus cures a disabled man who couldn’t walk and tells him to ‘rise, take up
, thy bed, and walk’ – poem represents a similarly miraculous escape/ freedom for the narrator
“His mouth slightly open, his eyes bulging with greed”
o Reversal of attitudes – now he has his mouth open and is greedy
o His greed has become fatal, much like how he tried to make hers fatal by encouraging her obesity
“There was nothing left in the house to eat.”
o New life without endless, dangerous food. Strong sense of uncertainty, question over whether she
can rebuild her life – left with spiritual emptiness.
o Short, factual sentence with ambiguous ending – chilling
o Still left with focus on what to “eat” – not really liberated? (abuse lives forever with you? Or
perpetuation of damaging body ideals for women in the media/ society creates endless cycle that
will never end?)
o Last stanza constructed of three separate, emphatic sentences, each important in ending the
woman’s story
Chainsaw Versus the Pampas Grass - Simon Armitage
Summary / Title Context
The chainsaw, a human invention and symbol of Armitage = Yorkshire-born poet
power and masculinity, battles with the natural His work experience as a probation officer may
world. The pampas grass represents nature, which have influenced the creation of some of his
ultimately wins. sociopathic personas
TITLE: Work characterised by effective use of local
Battle seems comically one-sided = grass idiom and dialect
subverts expectations Often utilised the dramatic monologue, with
Speaker is not in the title = chainsaw is a distinct many of his personas being males in crises
character, acting almost autonomously.
Personification of chainsaw abdicates speaker
from responsibility
Lack of an article (‘a’ or ‘the’) = chainsaw sounds
notorious, arrogant, like a powerful superhero
Themes Tone
Power & Conflict Brutal, violent
Masculinity → chainsaw is a boorish male Aggressive → plosive sounds e.g. “back below”
while the grass is a decorative victim Sinister → chainsaw causes suffering
Gender → subverts traditional tropes by end Humorous
of poem Voice = 1st and 3rd person = switches to 1 st
Power and masculinity linked to most in 5th stanza – initially distant narrator
destructiveness becomes violence-crazed = reveals that it is
Scene is a domestic microcosm of the world actually man vs nature, not machine vs nature
= environmental destruction/ deforestation
Language Techniques
Personification of chainsaw – abdicates speaker’s responsibility, projection of human violence onto the
tool (= evil in humans, not tool itself)
Verb choices → emphasises mutilation - the plant is “severed or felled or torn” (polysyndetic triplet) and
this area of the garden becomes a “dead zone”
‘W’ alliteration sounds like the revving of machinery → “The weightless wreckage of wasps and lies”.
Psychoanalytic reading → chainsaw embodies the poet’s subconscious desires
o Or reflects the masculine psyche he’s seen embedded in others and has grown to fear in
himself?
‘Dabbed’ ‘docked’ ‘dismissed’ - alliterative verbs - hard d sound emphasises violence
Dynamic verbs (“Knocked”, “swung”, “flare”) suggest the capacity for sudden, frantic, dangerous action
END OF POEM
o Grass grows back and is compared to “asparagus tips” and “corn in Egypt” – nature to describe
nature = circularity/ unstoppable force of nature
o Even man described naturally: “midday moon” – hints that man and nature are inseparable in
the end?
“Midday moon” = weak, almost oxymoronic = suggests man’s impotence against grass
Syntactic parallel of Stanza 3: “The chainsaw with its bloody desire” and Stanza 4: “The pampas grass
with its ludicrous feathers” = male vs female, antithetical
Structure & Form
8 stanzas
Variation in line length → confusion, haze of violent madness?
o Mix of line lengths could also be seen as representing the destructive nature of the chainsaw,
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