English home language :Poetry-Memory by Chris van wyk

Introduction

Welcome students

In this session we will try and understand the concepts and storyline of the poem Memory by Chris Van Wyk.

Use link below to find introduction to the lesson

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pOZIrNXA_IwMoJmaslWFhP-M6d7GqAC4/view?usp=sharing

Task

Analyze the poem and complete the activity below

Memory by Chris van Wyk

Derek is dangling on the kitchen chair

While I’m shuffling about in a flutter of flour.

Mummy is making vetkoek on the primus.

Derek is too small to peer over the table,

That’s why mummy has perched him on the chair. 5

His dummy twitters so he’s a bird

I’m not that small; I was four in July.

I’m tall enough to see what’s going on;

I’m a giraffe and the blotches of shadow

On the ceiling and the walls 10

From the flames of the primus and candle

Are the patches on my back

Daddy’s coming home soon

From the factory where they are turning him into

A cupboard that creaks, 15

But the vetkoek are sizzling and growing

Like bloated gold coins,

We’re rich!

This is the first void memory of childhood.

Why have I never written it all down before? 20

Maybe because the pan falls with a clatter

And the oil swims towards the twittering bird.

Mummy flattens her forearm on the table

Stopping the seething flood

As she does so she pleads with the bird to fly away, 25

but quietly so as not to ruffle his feathers.

But my brother clambers off the chair

as if he has all the time in the world

Sensing danger, the twittering gives way to a wail

and the giraffe’s patches flare on the restive walls. 30

Ma gives a savage scream that echoes across the decades

and cauterizes my childhood like a long scar.

What are the main themes of the poem?
Is the author the speaker of the poem?
Refer to stanza one what does the poet compares his brother to?
Identify a rhetorical question in the poem?
Give an example of alliteration in the last stanza qouting two consecutive words?
Identify the 3 people in the first stanza?
Which line in stanza 3 is the simile?
Give another word in the poem that refers to mother?
Qoute the use of personification in stanza 4?
What does the idiom ruffle his feathers?

See below video explaining how to analyze a poem

https://youtu.be/Nih3NIWKyKA

Process

Step 1: Analyze the poem

Step 2: Identify different types of figure of speech

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jomyc90rdDOYKxTC-pmzHjnhJtHEoCAT/view?usp=sharing

Step 3: After analyzing the poem watch the video below to compare your notes

https://youtu.be/U8C2Vl-6tQA

Evaluation

Rubric for analyzing poem

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ooObYmRJ6S4UZ-3VleoKXW5zLSX8CJcL/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=101756907108181273282&rtpof=true&sd=true

Activity answers: