Conflict poetry

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Context - No Problem

Benjamin Zephaniah

  • Born in Birmingham, Jamaican background
  • Lived his entire life in England
  • Left school at 13 due to severe dyslexia - went to prison for burglary
  • Currently listed as one of the top 50 poets since WW2
  • Only experienced horrifc things happen to him
  • Extremely famous
  • Performs his poetry
  • Active human rights and animal rights campaigner
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Context - Half Caste

John agard

  • Carribean  - lives in England - married to Grace Nichols

John is exploring the worth placed on someone who is described using the phrase 'half-caste' 

Dialect - different grammar - John uses Creole dialect in Half Caste

Accent - different pronounciation

  • In 1980s we judged people strongly on their accent - led to a big movement to stop it
  • This is an opinioned poem - telling people to think about what they say before they say it
  • Uses a pun between overcast and half-caste (line 15-23)
  • Uses very short lines - emphatic
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Context - Cousin Kate

  • Very much about victorian double standards about seual morality  - men can have sex out of marriage whenever but if a woman does it then they are seen as a 'fallen woman'
  • Could contrast this with folk music - about the lives of ordinary people in famous stories
  • Christina Rosetti was from a rich educated family  
  • This is a fake ballad because instead of having 4 lines together she uses 2 which is a clever idea
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