Category: Writing

The poet shows us that the speaker feels like they are being too commanding towards the child. The speaker doesn’t want to force the child into things he doesn’t want to do. We can see this in the poem where it says ‘He can make sculptures and fabulous machines, invent games, tell jokes, give solemn, adult advice-but he is slow to read.‘ This is how the poet presents the speakers feelings about the child. They list the good things the child can do, then they say ‘but he is slow to read.‘ She is emphasising the fact that he is intelligent but he can’t do such a simple thing like reading. We can see that the speaker feels like they are being too commanding again in another quote ‘a fish returning to its element.‘ This quote is comparing the child to a fish. It does this by using the idea of a fish returning to its element, in this case the water. The way a fish returns to what it knows best is the same as the child returning to what he knows best which is not reading. The person teaching him to read doesn’t want him to dislike reading so they don’t force him to read. They want him to have a good experience of reading.

The child himself believes it is impossible for him to ever learn to read, which is why he tries to prolong the situation so he doesn’t have to read. We can see this where it says ‘sighing and shaking his head like an old man, who knows the mountains are impassible.‘ This shows us that like an old man knows it is impassible for him to climb a mountain, the child also knows in his mind it’s impossible for him to ever learn how to read. He plays with the words instead of reading them so that he doesn’t have to read them. It shows us this where it says ‘He toys with words letting them go cold as gristly meat, until I relent.‘ This shows us he doesn’t want to read so he is trying his best to waste time until the person teaching him gets tired of him refusing. The word relent suggests that the person teaching him to read has to nag him to do it.

Carol Ann Duffy uses imagery in her poem, war photographer to show us how emotion is a big part of conflict. One way she shows us this is when she says ‘how blood stained into foreign dust’. This quote shows us how all the bloodshed of war has absorbed into the earth and were forgotten and so the victims are forgotten. This quote links to emotion because the quote is about rememberance. It’s about how so much conflict happens at once, the people dying through that time are forgotten.

The people you are about to meet are not as lucky as you. Most people prefer to ignore them. They themselves prefer not to bother us. But at the end of the day, there is an issue that the government, politicians and the media decide not to mention, because they believe it will expose a crack in our economy.

These people are the ones living in the UK who have jobs but are somehow still not able to provide for their family.

The government are made leaders of our country to help us as citizens. They are meant to be integrous, honest and sincere however they lack these traits at times. An example of this is the people living in poverty you see around you all the time. They say they are going to make people’s lives better but that doesn’t seem to be happening. In 2014, 6.5% of the UK’s population were in severe poverty, equivalent to approximately 3.9 million people. This is a shocking statistic as the population of the UK is 65,329,580. If the government were true to their word then the poverty rate would be much lower. 43.52% of people went to food banks because their benefits were cut by the government.

Victims of benefit cuts are left with no other option. Now that they cannot pay to keep a roof above their head, they have to go and live in a homeless shelter with complete strangers. In these shelters they have mattresses for the people to sleep on.  

For a lot of people, poverty is just something we read about in the news. For my neighbor however, it was something that he lived on a daily basis. One night when I was cleaning up my room, I remember looking out of my window onto my road and seeing him rummaging through my dustbins for food. For a split second, we caught eyes, then he ran off into the darkness.

At that moment I realized that poverty is a massive problem in the UK and the government ones who struggle with poverty are to blame.