Have Yr 11 English exams on Monday and Tuesday. Need to be able to talk about 'Change' in relation to Harry Wood and Loch Ard Gorge by John Foulcher, and Bora Ring by Judith Wright. Have included poems below to make it easier. Any help would be appreciated.

HARRY WOOD

Harry Wood worked in the mines, digging his way
out of poverty, finding
in his twenties
an empty foreman’s place.

Once, he told us, he fired a man
for fooling with the ropes, and the union
went out for weeks. He held on, though, and they sank
back to the sleek coal caves
one man short,
breathing again the air invisible from rock.

And one time collapsing
the moment he started, the mine nearly took him,
he heard them say, “Wood’s gone”,
as the shovels rattled the earth.

Now he’s bought the farm,
and every year before the market
he herds the steers in by himself,
pricks at their tubs of meat with a current-charged bar
until they panic
and take the long unbroken slope
creaking into the truck.

Kangaroo bones
pocked with skin and maggot bubbles of flesh
edge the house and yard.

At night, he sits
and talks of the mines, stares at the dark window –
when he’s dead,
the farm will go to his grandchildren,
and they won’t be poor

as he was, and they’ll have time, he believes,
for something more than survival


Loch Ard Gorge

We climb along a weathered cream precipice
look down into the waves,
tide thrust into the dark interior of earth
with a sound like fire uncontrolled
A century ago, there was a shipwreck here. Its gravestones
hump the grass
a hundred yards away - you can just make out their name,
the hammocks of bone and meat
lugged from the sea and dumped in the soil
Sheep and cattle surround the place,
kicking tufts of unconcern
through the sea’s brittle, incessant static,
their heads slung
to the grass,
their teeth locked on the earth,
while, somewhere past the unfinished cliffs,
savage dark fish
are tearing the prey apart, blood phrasing the water
decked with light.


Bora Ring

The song is gone; the dance
is secret with the dancers in the earth,
the ritual useless, and the tribal story
lost in an alien tale.

Only the grass stands up
to mark the dancing-ring: the apple-gums
posture and mime a past corroboree,
murmur a broken chant.

The hunter is gone: the spear
is splintered underground; the painted bodies
a dream the world breathed sleeping and forgot.
The nomad feet are still.

Only the rider's heart
halts at a sightless shadow, an unsaid word
that fastens in the blood the ancient curse,
the fear as old as Cain.

You've left it a bit late for your exam revision, haven't you? And didn't your teacher give you some idea of what was acceptable on the exam?

The common theme seems to me to be life and death and a change from one to the other, with a vertical movement.

In Loch Ard Gorge, We, the sheep and cattle and the grass are alive above the waves and the soil. Once there was a ship and it's sailors, alive like us, but now they are dead and below.

Again in Bora Ring, once there were dancers, alive, above, now they are dead, below.

But Harry Wood does not have life, when he was young he was below in the dark as a miner given up for dead. And even when he comes above there is still death.

That's my way of looking at them, but you'll need to do more work yourself.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/14/2008 06:02PM by IanAKB.

Quote:

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Have Yr 11 English exams on Monday and Tuesday. Need to be able to talk about 'Change' in relation to Harry Wood and Loch Ard Gorge by John Foulcher, and Bora Ring by Judith Wright. Have included poems below to make it easier. Any help would be appreciated.

HARRY WOOD

Harry Wood worked in the mines, digging his way
out of poverty, finding
in his twenties
an empty foreman’s place.

Once, he told us, he fired a man
for fooling with the ropes, and the union
went out for weeks. He held on, though, and they sank
back to the sleek coal caves
one man short,
breathing again the air invisible from rock.

And one time collapsing
the moment he started, the mine nearly took him,
he heard them say, “Wood’s gone”,
as the shovels rattled the earth.

Now he’s bought the farm,
and every year before the market
he herds the steers in by himself,
pricks at their tubs of meat with a current-charged bar
until they panic
and take the long unbroken slope
creaking into the truck.

Kangaroo bones
pocked with skin and maggot bubbles of flesh
edge the house and yard.

At night, he sits
and talks of the mines, stares at the dark window –
when he’s dead,
the farm will go to his grandchildren,
and they won’t be poor

as he was, and they’ll have time, he believes,
for something more than survival


Loch Ard Gorge

We climb along a weathered cream precipice
look down into the waves,
tide thrust into the dark interior of earth
with a sound like fire uncontrolled
A century ago, there was a shipwreck here. Its gravestones
hump the grass
a hundred yards away - you can just make out their name,
the hammocks of bone and meat
lugged from the sea and dumped in the soil
Sheep and cattle surround the place,
kicking tufts of unconcern
through the sea’s brittle, incessant static,
their heads slung
to the grass,
their teeth locked on the earth,
while, somewhere past the unfinished cliffs,
savage dark fish
are tearing the prey apart, blood phrasing the water
decked with light.


Bora Ring

The song is gone; the dance
is secret with the dancers in the earth,
the ritual useless, and the tribal story
lost in an alien tale.

Only the grass stands up
to mark the dancing-ring: the apple-gums
posture and mime a past corroboree,
murmur a broken chant.

The hunter is gone: the spear
is splintered underground; the painted bodies
a dream the world breathed sleeping and forgot.
The nomad feet are still.

Only the rider's heart
halts at a sightless shadow, an unsaid word
that fastens in the blood the ancient curse,
the fear as old as Cain.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/02/2022 07:02AM by helenk579.

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