Analysing imagery in a poem

English · Poetry imagery

Pests or eagles? Sort the words

Pick a word, then pick the column where it belongs. Positive or negative: what does this word suggest?

Do this word’s connotations feel positive or negative?

12 of 12 still to sort.

Twelve single words from two poems. Decide what each one suggests, then switch the rule and sort the same words again by what they describe. Our connotation lists are one reading; you might hear something different, and that’s fine if you can explain it.

Predict, then check

You’ve just sorted these words. Now zoom out to the whole poem.

Clarke first calls Indigenous people ‘pests’ and ‘broken’, then ‘eagle’ and ‘poppies’. What happens to the tone of the poem?

What you need to know

• Connotations are the feelings, images or associations that come to mind when you hear a word.
• To analyse a vocabulary choice, talk about its connotations: what the word reminds you of, makes you feel, or links to.
• Have a goJamal says, “Imagery analysis is just naming the technique, job done.” Using what you’ve just read, what should he do instead?

  Talk about the word’s connotations: what it reminds him of and makes him feel.

  A name alone doesn’t say what a word suggests, and what the word suggests is the analysis.

• Sensory language creates a vivid image in your mind and can stir strong emotion. It covers smell, hearing, sight, taste and touch.
• Have a goImagine moving to a new home. Write one sentence about it that uses at least two of the five senses.

  Any sentence using two senses, e.g. “The new house smelled of fresh paint and every footstep echoed.”

  Sensory language builds a vivid image from what you can smell, hear, see, taste and touch.

• In ‘This Poem is Taking Place on Stolen Land’, Clarke describes Indigenous populations as ‘pests’: unwanted, a nuisance, detrimental and harmful.
• ‘Eagle’ and ‘poppies’ describe the same people with positive connotations, so the poem’s tone starts to change there.
• For the colonisers, Clarke chooses ‘plucking’, ‘starved’, ‘savagery’ and ‘fangs’: a very negative light that exposes how harmful their actions were.
• Nichols paints the Caribbean in ‘wombing’, ‘blue’, ‘emerald’, ‘sun’ and ‘surf’, so the man in ‘Island Man’ likely feels very positive about it.
• London gets ‘dull’, ‘grey’, ‘wheels’, ‘crumpled’ and ‘metallic’: a big mood change, and the man likely feels more negative.
• A paragraph on how a poet uses language needs quotations from the poem, and they only need to be one word long.
• Have a goSofia’s paragraph says Clarke shows the colonisers in a very negative light. Which one word should she quote: ‘plucking’, ‘poppies’ or ‘blue’?

  ‘Plucking’

  ‘Poppies’ describes Indigenous populations and ‘blue’ belongs to ‘Island Man’; and one word is enough to quote.

The big picture

A single word can carry a whole picture. You’ll explore the connotations of single words from Clarke’s ‘This Poem is Taking Place on Stolen Land’ and Grace Nichols’s ‘Island Man’, and use them to say how each poet presents people and places, finishing with a short analytical paragraph supported by one-word quotations.

⚠ Watch out

Treating imagery analysis as naming a technique. Naming isn’t exploring. Say what the chosen word suggests (its connotations) and what that presents about the person or place.

Memory hook

Picture it. Feel it. Say what it shows: what does the word make you picture, how does it make you feel, and what does that show about the person or place?

Check yourself

Pick any word from the sort except ‘pests’. Can you say what it makes you think of, and what it presents about the person or place? Both? Then you’re analysing imagery.