Gillian Clarke: Poems Essay Questions

How does time function in Clarke's poems?

A variety of timelines appear in Gillian Clarke's poetry. Whether speakers recount a memory and its significance in the present day or layer different chronologies across the wide expanse of time, Clark positions time as a fluid and active force. In "Catrin," the speaker recounts the day of her daughter's birth, repeatedly saying "I can remember you" (6). This insistence on memory shows the significance of the past and its impact on the speaker's present. In both chronologies, the speaker's relationship with her daughter is defined by love and conflict.

Time metaphorically appears as dark water in "Lunchtime Lecture," and the speaker reaches further across the wide expanse of time than do speakers in other poems by Clarke. "Lunchtime Lecture" layers timelines separated by several millennia. While encountering the skull of a long-dead woman during a museum lecture, the speaker imagines the woman as a living being. The intimacy the speaker feels also awakens her to her own mortality.

Clarke typically portrays encounters between humans and animals or plants in a positive or at least neutral light. What are some examples of Clarke construing this relationship between humans and other beings in a more complex or negative manner?

Encounters between human speakers and other beings in nature demonstrate Clark's acute awareness of both human connection and conflict with the natural world. The "shocking / intimacy" that the speaker in "Heron at Port Talbot" feels after nearly colliding with the heron prompts her to reflect on the overall relationship between human industry and nature (10-11). While the individual speakers are not at fault, these encounters do gesture toward the harmful impacts of human pollution on the environment. Another poem that conveys this impact is "Neighbours," where humans and other species across Europe suffer after the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. By comparing the explosion to the story of Pandora's box, the speaker insinuates that human curiosity (and hubris) unleashed horror on the world. Despite this awareness of the human potential to cause harm, however, the majority of Clarke's poems show human interaction with other beings in a positive light.

What role does music play in Clarke's poetry? Provide examples.

Sound plays an essential role in all poetry, and music is a form of organized sound that expresses an artistic intention. In interviews, Clarke defines poetry as consisting of musicality and truth, which contributes to its memorability. For her, then, good poetry must be musical. "Musician" is among Clarke's poems that explicitly focus on music, but all of her poems express musicality through different literary techniques. These include alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia. For example, the lyrical line "Warning of winds off the sea" from "Heron at Port Talbot" echoes the sound of wind through the alliterative /w/ sound (5). In "Lunchtime Lecture," the final line implements onomatopoeia with the words "gulping" and "booms" (28). The last line in "Neighbors" which reads, "glasnost. golau glas. a first break of blue," uses alliteration, consonance, and assonance to weave sonic and semantic meanings together (22).

Compare and contrast the speakers' experiences of motherhood in "Catrin" and "Musician."

In general, speakers should not be conflated with poets. However, Clarke states on her personal website that she wrote "Catrin" and "Musician" respectively for her daughter Catrin and her son Owain. Thus these poems can be said to reflect particular moments in or impressions of Clark's role as a mother. In "Catrin," the speaker describes her connection to her daughter in a bodily, loving, and conflictive way. The umbilical cord is characterized as a "tight / Red rope of love" that later metaphorically tightens around the speaker's life, "trailing love and conflict" (7-8 and 27). In comparison, the tone of "Musician" is much calmer and softer, reflecting a less antagonistic relationship between mother and child. The speaker allows her son to remain so engrossed in playing the piano that he does not sleep. Another difference between the two poems is that Catrin requests to to out and skate in the dark while Owain remains inside the house as bitterly cold snow falls outside. It seems that both speakers wish to keep their children close to home, and overall feel a sense of awe in the role of motherhood.

How does Clarke use imagery to evoke particular senses? Give examples.

Clarke evokes sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing through her imagery. These sensory details portray the setting, tone, and mood in each poem and also create an immersive reading experience. In "Musician" the speaker spends a winter feeling the bitterly cold temperature while listening to her son play the piano. These two senses combine in auditory imagery such as in the lines, "hear the piano’s muffled bells, / a first pianissimo slip of snow from the roof" (21-22). Alliteration of the /l/ and /s/ sounds evoke the sounds of the piano and the snow. In "Lunchtime Lecture," the speaker uses evocative imagery such as when she calls the long-dead woman "a tree in winter, stripped white on a black sky" (21). This gives the dead woman a colorful, textured, and living presence. Scholars have used words like "concrete" and "tactile" in relation to Clarke's poetry, but it is also deeply sensuous.