Boland is quite likely to appear on the paper this June there are two reasons for that first of all she is a woman and second she is Irish if you look over past papers you will see that there is a consistent pattern of women and Irish poets coming up disproportionately now of course this doesn't mean anything nothing's set in stone it could well be a paper with only men on it we don't know but if you were to go by past papers it's quite likely that she's going to be on so just a few words about the poetry question it's worth 50 marks for the proscribed poetry at the length that we suggest here is 4 a4 pages in kind of medium writing and in my own leading search I wrote 5 pages on TS Eliot and the exam back then was a bit shorter so it really depends I suppose on how much you feel you can say by the poet but 4 pages would be a decent guideline so with any poetry question and there are just two things that you always need to keep in mind and this really applies to Shakespeare too to your single text but the most important things are what the poet is writing about and how they're writing about it so what they're writing about is also called themes it's also called subject matter and how they're writing about it is made up of things like imagery structure the kind of language that they use the kind of poetic techniques that they use and all those ways of really accentuating what they're writing about which brings me to the third point and that is kind of the bonus thing on top of the two things the what and the how and the third thing is Heather connected so and the reason why poets write in certain ways it's always to emphasize what they're writing about and so for example use of precise language helped them to communicate a certain theme so we're going to talk about different themes that are involved in Boland's poems so first off is Society so Boland being an Irish woman she's very proud to be Irish she talks about the country quite a lot in terms of her biography she was the daughter of the Irish ambassador to the UK and as you can imagine that is a hugely important post this was back in times when the UK Ireland relationships were especially complicated so she spent part of her childhood in London and that has shaped the way that she perceives Ireland and and made her especially proud to be Irish having said all that she's not a kind of nationalist in a closed-minded kind of way she talks about the difficulties between Ireland and Britain and she certainly doesn't hold back she doesn't try and sugarcoat it but at the same time she always argues for civic responsibility humanity peace trying to live together rather than kind of one nation prevailing over the other and there are a number of poet poems that feature this so the War Horse the famine Road child of our time and outside history are all important in discussing this theme so this is an example from the War Horse and the concept of death and the adjective casual are juxtaposed in the sentence so just to remind you ducks to position is the placement of two things beside each other to produce a contrasting effect this draws the reader's attention to the idea that death has become casual in this setting so casual Iren of his shoes minting the innocent earth that's assimilate for the impact that violence has on defenseless civilians the herb stamps describes something both irreversible and flippant so it is easy to stamp something but you can't take away the stamp once you've stamped it and what she's probably alluding to here very indirectly is it's just like shooting a gun at someone you can very easily pull the trigger but it can't be undone and so it's a particularly precise choice of words just as a side note and note that the speaker seems very calm as well there's nothing unusual about the experience and that's probably a criticizing kind of comment on how desensitized people tend to get and as far as death is concerned when it was constantly happening around them now we're going to move on to the theme of children and motherhood so the themes of children and motherhood are very dominant throughout her poetry you can see a whole list of poems talking about motherhood and and children here so we're going to look at an example from the poem child of our time and so the poem opens very dramatically obviously there's something that happened between yesterday and today such that knowing a lullaby became significant it could have been the beginning of a tender poem about motherhood but unfortunately this is an incredibly poignant poem that marks the death of a child in a bombing in Dublin that occurred in 1974 so addressing her counterpart directly allows the speaker to be more personal in this poem the language is unusual straightaway you have taught me so children don't usually teach adults so it's a sign that something unnatural something very unusual is going on evidently the impact of what happened has inspired the poet to write a poem overnight this marks the extent to which Boland was shocked by the event the word order is used in unusual ways well perhaps this marks the clarity and urgency see that's required to address and this terrible event and that again is a remark on her use of language and so children obviously cry as a matter of course but the term final cry inspires through horrible images of the child's last moments as the explosion took place so the language is simple but is really moving and powerful this is a very abstract example of the theme of motherhood it's as much to do with society as it is to do with motherhood there will be other examples of motherhood that are very kind of domestic and and cute and we'll talk about that in a little while the other thing that Boland wrote about that very few poets have written about is suburban life and it's not usually considered to be elevated and sophisticated enough to deserve a poet's attention however suburban life got a mention in a number of Bolin's poems here below so this moment white Hawthorn the pomegranate and the warhorse even so this moment celebrates motherhood nature and simple joys in life so while the structure the sentences everything is very simple about this poem there is clear anticipation and intrigue so Boland managed to incorporate something really exciting into an image of suburban life and so the short impatient sentences that really help to achieve that here and that's another example of how imagery and structure help to emphasize the theme of the poem the next thing we're going to talk about is a Boland and how she viewed being a woman so there is a quite a lot of feminism in her poetry and it's clearest in the shadowed Oh outside history and the farming Road just be a little bit careful when talking about feminism because in the context of poetry it's just it's very elevated and it's very kind and gentle it's are sort of revolutionary and maybe aggressive as we sometimes see it in our modern-day context the thing about poetry that it's never hateful it's always trying to be kind of the bigger person if that makes sense the poet is always trying to take a very how many present point of view trying to be non biased non-judgmental so when bolon talks about being a woman it's really celebrating women and emphasizing that they deserve more attention rather than necessarily blaming anyone so this is an example from the poem of the shadow doll so a shadow doll is a doll dressed in a mock-up of the wedding dress so this would have been given to a woman by her dressmaker during the Victorian era and a protective glass dome would rest on top so here is the image of a protected shield doll and that emphasizes the extent to which the bride's thoughts are hidden she's discreet about her anxieties and desires quickening refers to pregnancy perhaps something that the speaker sees as here at her future but the mood of the poem suggests that she's apprehensive about it another notable thing about Boleyn subject matter that is that it tends to be very personal so a lot of her poems are quite autobiographic and most notably love white Hawthorne and the pomegranate so here's an example from the pomegranate so we all love this image here it's very relatable and few poets would ever managed to incorporate cans of coke and Greek and Roman mythology into one poem as well as being an image that refers to the Bible it's also a very huge image because it talks about a situation that could have easily happened in Bolin's life she could have easily passed by her child's room and has seen that image this is a more kind of personal take on motherhood as well as just being of every personal poem at the same time the image of whole fruit is probably referring to the Bible so the fruit being uncut and kind of implies that at some point it will be caught or bitten into and the poet is apprehensive of what may happen then and that is kind of feeding into the whole theme of letting go and letting your child grow up which is also of course deeply personal Boland also experimented with structure the farmer rode the pomegranate and this moment or have rather unusual structure and we spoken about this moment quite a bit already so the structure is deliberately uncomplicated perhaps to emphasize the relative simplicity of suburban life and to make the point that complexity isn't required for someone to be happy and mythology also feeds into the how of bowland wrote her poems so she referred to quite a lot of Greek mythology probably a little bit of Roman but we can just stick with Greek if that's easier and in love and the pomegranate she compares her family members to characters from a Greek mythology so this is an allusion probably to Homer's Odyssey it's talking about Greek mythology here in the River Styx and it has crossed as one enters hell in Greek mythology the equivalent of Christian house called the underworld so the image of a hellish River does creates a kind of an eerie atmosphere and obviously the tale of Odyssey is significant in in terms of how it could reflect on the poet's relationship with her husband and the language as we've seen many times tends to be quite plain but very deliberate and ultimately so the three things the last three things we've taught that we've talked about our structure mythology and language and the all the other things have been themes so how do they intertwine they really helped to create believable characters so every character tends to be quite complex there is no one who's quite black and white all the characters are a believable relatable and realistic and there's a lot of sort of humanity and emotion and described in a quite a non-judgmental way and Boland has a way of communicating people's attitudes and emotions in a very clear way so I hope that this video has helped you with your study of Bowland and we have notes in a lot more detail about Boland and sample answers on the website as well as complete guides at the exam this June as well as the one in 2018 and you can check them out there on the website I look forward to answering more of your questions this video was made because you guys requested it on Twitter as the poet of your choice so do tweet at six to five points on Twitter Instagram snapchat where everywhere let us know what is missing for you and we'll try and make life easier for you for the exams best of luck