KS4 Wider Reading Poetry
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KS4 Wider Reading Poetry Contents Sleeping Out- (Grace Nichols) To my Coral Bones- (Grace Nichols) Still Man is True – (Sayeed Abubakar) Like a Beacon – (Grace Nichols) Refugee Mother and Child – Hurricane Hits England - (Grace Nichols) (Chinua Achebe) Praise Song for my Mother – (Grace Vultures – (Chinua Achebe) Checking Out Me History - (John Agard) Nichols) Flag - (John Agard) Not my business - (Niyi Osudare) Listen Mr Oxford Don – (John Agard) This Dog - (Rabindranath Tagore) Real- (Akala) Coconut Hair – (Caleb Femi) Sari - (Moniza Alivi) For Mos Def –(Theresa Lola) Caged Bird – (Maya Angelou) Does my bum look big enough in this?- Still I Rise – (Maya Angelou) (Aisha Sanyang-Meek) Phenomenal Woman – (Maya Angelou) On Kindness- (Inua Ellams) Equality – (Maya Angelou) Love after love- (Derek Walcott) The Black Family Pledge- Midsummer, Tobago- (Derek Walcott) (Maya Angelou) The Fist- (Derek Walcott) Dear Hearing World- (Raymond Antrobus) Torture – (Alice Walker) I Come From - (Dean Atta) Be Nobody’s Darling- (Alice Walker) Homage to my Hips – (Lucille Clifton) Library Ology – (Benjamin Zephaniah) 4/30/92 for Rodney King - (Lucille Clifton) The Right Word - (Imtiaz Dharker) No problem- (Benjamin Zephaniah) Immigrant’s Song- (Tishani Doshi) Dis Poetry – (Benjamin Zephaniah) Directions – (Inua Ellams) The British - (Benjamin Zephaniah) Old Tongue - (Jackie Kay) The Laws of Motion- (Nikki Giovanni) Whenever you see this icon: I look at the world – (Langston Hughes) I, Too- (Langston Hughes) Dreams – (Langston Hughes) If we must die – (Claude McKay) The Law Concerning Mermaids- click to listen to a performance of the poem (Kei Miller) Someone Leans Near – (Toni Morrison) The Gift of India – (Sarojini Naidu) Brian – (Grace Nichols) Choose your Take a line from the favourite words/ poem and use it as a Creative phrases/ images and starting point for responses include these in a your own piece of piece of your own writing. to poetry writing. If you like one of the poems, research the Choose your poet and learn more favourite section of a Share the poem with about their life and poem and illustrate someone who you the time they were it. think will enjoy it. writing. How has the poem been shaped by history? If you like one of the poets, research Create a piece of other poems they Write a poem/ story writing using one of have written, or ask that is a response or the techniques you your English teacher reply to one of the have seen in the for more poems. poems. recommendations about their work. Find poems that have a theme or idea in common. Learn a poem off by Write a poem/ story Consider how heart and perform it using the same title. different poets for someone. present different ideas. Still Man is True Still Man is true; I come back to Man Again and again. Leaving all the blue sins And filthiness of civilization behind, I rush to join Man's procession. Neither forest nor loneliness, I adore Only the maddened din and bustle of life; The soul that longs for the blind self-success Is now detestable corpse, the food for a vulture. Those who will go to the Moon leaving men on earth; Those who desire the blue-eyed nymphs of heaven; Those who are always indifferent to men's Defeat and bad news; I wish they succeed In building gold-house in heaven And I live and die here only with Man. Sayeed Abubakar Listen Mr. Oxford Don Me not no Oxford don me a simple immigrant from Clapham Common I didn't graduate I immigrate But listen Mr Oxford don I'm a man on de run and a man on de run is a dangerous one I ent have no gun I ent have no knife but mugging de Queen's English is the story of my life I don't need no axe to split/ up yu syntax I don't need no hammer to mash/ up yu grammar I warning you Mr. Oxford don I'm a wanted man and a wanted man is a dangerous one Dem accuse me of assault on de Oxford dictionary/ imagine a concise peaceful man like me/ dem want me to serve time for inciting rhyme to riot but I tekking it quiet down here in Clapham Common I'm not violent man Mr. Oxford don I only armed wit mih human breath but human breath is a dangerous weapon So mek dem send one big word after me I ent serving no jail sentence I slashing suffix in self-defence I bashing future wit present tense and if necessary I making de Queen's English accessory/ to my offence John Agard Checking out me history Dem tell me Dem tell me Wha dem want to tell me Bandage up me eye with me own history Blind me to my own identity Dem tell me bout 1066 and all dat dem tell me bout Dick Whittington and he cat But Touissant L’Ouverture no dem never tell me bout dat Toussaint a slave with vision lick back Napoleon battalion and first Black Republic born Toussaint de thorn to de French Toussaint de beacon of de Haitian Revolution Dem tell me bout de man who discover de balloon and de cow who jump over de moon Dem tell me bout de dish run away with de spoon but dem never tell me bout Nanny de maroon Nanny see-far woman of mountain dream fire-woman struggle hopeful stream to freedom river Dem tell me bout Lord Nelson and Waterloo but dem never tell me bout Shaka de great Zulu Dem tell me bout Columbus and 1492 but what happen to de Caribs and de Arawaks too Dem tell me bout Florence Nightingale and she lamp and how Robin Hood used to camp Dem tell me bout ole King Cole was a merry ole soul but dem never tell me bout Mary Seacole From Jamaica she travel far to the Crimean War she volunteer to go and even when de British said no she still brave the Russian snow a healing star among the wounded a yellow sunrise to the dying Dem tell me Dem tell me wha dem want to tell me But now I checking out me own history I carving out me identity John Agard Flag What's that fluttering in the breeze? It's just a piece of cloth that brings a nation to its knees. What's that unfurling from a pole? It's just a piece of cloth That makes the guts of men grow bold. What's that rising over the tent? It's just a piece of cloth that dares the coward to relent. What's that flying across a field? It's just a piece of cloth that will outlive the blood you bleed. How can I possess such a cloth? Just ask for a flag my friend. Then blind your conscience to the end. John Agard Refugee Mother and Child No Madonna and Child could touch that picture of a mother’s tenderness for a son she soon would have to forget. The air was heavy with odours of diarrhoea of unwashed children with washed-out ribs and dried-up bottoms struggling in laboured steps behind blown empty bellies. Most mothers there had long ceased to care but not this one; she held a ghost smile between her teeth and in her eyes the ghost of a mother’s pride as she combed the rust-coloured hair left on his skull and then – singing in her eyes – began carefully to part it… In another life this would have been a little daily act of no consequence before his breakfast and school; now she did it like putting flowers on a tiny grave. Chinua Achebe Vultures In the greyness and drizzle of one despondent dawn unstirred by harbingers of sunbreak a vulture perching high on broken bone of a dead tree nestled close to his mate his smooth bashed-in head, a pebble on a stem rooted in a dump of gross feathers, inclined affectionately to hers. Yesterday they picked the eyes of a swollen corpse in a water-logged trench and ate the things in its bowel. Full gorged they chose their roost keeping the hollowed remnant in easy range of cold telescopic eyes ... Strange indeed how love in other ways so particular will pick a corner in that charnel-house tidy it and coil up there, perhaps even fall asleep - her face turned to the wall! ...Thus the Commandant at Belsen Camp going home for the day with fumes of human roast clinging rebelliously to his hairy nostrils will stop at the wayside sweet-shop and pick up a chocolate for his tender offspring waiting at home for Daddy's return ... Praise bounteous providence if you will that grants even an ogre a tiny glow-worm tenderness encapsulated in icy caverns of a cruel heart or else despair for in every germ of that kindred love is lodged the perpetuity of evil. Chinua Achebe Real Not victory, nor slaughter The house of pain, nor pains of laughter Not bombs, nor the dust that was the village Not mansion, nor mud-hut, palace or cardboard sheet Not silk shawl or cotton canvas, Not car, nor carriage All is borne from no-thing Therefore nothing is all that is real The senses are but confusions illusion A compass of false conclusion Ears house some vibrations as cries or music Yet others pass undetected Eyes conclude colour, where some light is reflected Yet most light passes the eye, undetected Noses upturn at the stench of poverty But delight in the rich stink of robbery Hands hold solid, sure of shape Yet that same collection of atoms Is just empty space Tongues taste terrible bitterness where sweet cures reside And delight in deliciousness where pernicious poisons hide.