Place

Free Dubai

Palm trees rejoicing in the bright sun

Whirling in a gold world of Gucci

Cloud free, sand neighbouring the sea,

Surging through slides with my cousin,

His leg was almost sucked into the black

Like the workers the sites are finished with

Taken far away, to where no-one can see

Their rags of blue overalls, Mum says,

‘There’s a secret in Dubai’. Hindu slaves,

Hidden in the desert, build the towers,

Eating one meal a day, drinking sand,

We splash in the water, sipping icy soda.

Truth sayers let reality irrigate the region,

Can Dubai have water parks and emancipation?

Blake's London

Write your own poem about place and power inspired by William Blake's London, Kate Tempest's Cannibal Kids and Cat Brogan's Paris Smells Like Piss.

Curriculum Link

http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/gcse/english-literature-8702/subject-content/modern-texts-and-poetry

Blake's London in part of the

'Power and conflict' cluster 2 in

the AQA Poetry exam.

Section B Poetry: students will answer one comparative question on one named poem printed on the paper and one other poem from their chosen anthology cluster.

The focus of the question might vary but it is likely to revolve around the ideas and attitudes in the poem. The themes of power and conflict may both be present. Conflict can be external (physical) or internal (mental).

You will not have the anthology in the exam.

Paris – smells like piss

Cat Brogan

It's faint or overwhelming , depending,

The metro or the Seine is the pisser.

We unlock the port-a-loo, make do

With the floor hole that mums abhor.

Washing flutters under the fly over,

Children play on dead end routes,

Or push trolleys piled with metal.

Smoking chimneys draw my glaze

A shanty town haze blurs by.

Leftovers of leveled homes

Litter roadsides like the pyramids

Of lives I spied in Cape Town.

The candle in the night worker's van

Calls out like an ice cream jingle.

Everywhere, ghosts moving

The waste of the West

What issues is the poet concerned about in this poem?

Who is powerless ?

What are the causes of conflict?

Where is the poem set?

How can you tell?

Cat Brogan

What does the poem tell us about the girl?

MAKE IT STOP

BY: HUDA HAMMAD

I sit in the back seat of my father’s car,

My mum talking, my brother jumping.

Along the sandy bumpy road with dust clouds,

The heavy, dusty, hot wind whips against my face through the window.

Piles of rubbish covering the roadside,

Where there should be a pavement loaded with kids and books.

Dirty faced kids and helpless animals;

Gradually moving around this playground of horrors.

The tired mothers and the hunched men with their aching backs.

An old radio huffs and puffs somewhere

Making a background to the ancient sorrows of the 21th century.

Hungry and irritated children crying,

The cutlery clattering against each other.

The piercing sounds cut straight to my heart,

For nobody should suffer so long.

As the road gives away beneath the tyres, the whole image shifts.

As though dark clouds moved to reveal the beautiful bright sun.

Old men enjoying their days playing cards with old mates,

Mothers chatting and swinging their children on swings.

Men chatting over a football game and their posh offices.

Kids and youngsters playing on the clean grass.

Some sitting on a bench, mulling over a homework assignment.

A jogger with his dog and then many more.

People with their MP3s and IPods living in the present.

So why do the piles of rubbish give away to polished pavements?

We all live in the present, so why are some still stuck in the past?

The poverty and cruelty raging all around us, the slavery and horrors.

Why don’t we all unite to give human kind their rights and make it stop?

Saturday Jobs

She cracks her bubble gum,

Like it's a whip driving the dryer.

Weight lifts black bags into the pram

That stopped pushing her, maybe six years before.

She feeds the 20ps into the machine

With a gambler's perseverance,

A treasurer with a spangly purse.

I marvel at her twisted Congolese hairstyle.

Her cousins probably collect water much younger

While other London eight year olds go swimming.

My childhood jobs were polish the wood,

Clean the bathroom, wash the dishes.

Now I go to the launderette,

And here we meet and wait,

For our work to stop spinning,

We children of Saturday chores.

Student poem in response to Blake's London

Who has power in Patryck's London?

What are the causes of conflict?

What is the poet concerned about?

Nameless

For each block of flats you will find excuses,

A junkyard of rotting talent

These thirty-somethings , on the benches ,

Day after day, herb wafting ,

Beer cans cradled,

Children gazing at them like they are Gods .

Each light lost in a black hole of addiction,

You have your own mind,

Do not let those losers influence you,

Do not listen to them .

Look for signs to bypass mistakes,

Learn how smart people manoeuvre,

Avoid people scorched by the century,

Because it is a hundred times better

To be with a wise loser

Than a gang of stupid winners.

You have your mind,

Listen to the voice of the heart ,

Look - you are the architect of his own fate,

You have the biggest impact of all people

On the fulfilment of your dreams,

Just find your way.

Patryk Czyznikiewicz

Your Place

William Blake

winner of the Key stage 3

London

I wander thro' each charter'd street,

Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.

And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,

In every Infants cry of fear,

In every voice: in every ban,

The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry

Every blackning Church appalls,

And the hapless Soldiers sigh

Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear

How the youthful Harlots curse

Blasts the new-born Infants tear

And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

Power and conflict in your place

Pick a place to write about

• it could be your room, house, school, street, area, city, somewhere you have visited or lived before.

Use your five senses to describe your place

What people do you see?

Who has the power?

Who is powerless?

What conflict do you see?

Poet

William Blake was an English poet, painter and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

Born: November 28, 1757, Soho

Died: August 12, 1827, London

Blake was concerned about senseless wars and the blighting effects of the Industrial Revolution. He admired the writings of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. He has been described as an anarchist. He say poetry as a way to protest against the injustice he saw around him.

Blake believed that marriage was like slavery. If a woman had a child outside of marriage she would have been called a harlot (prostitute) and would have been unlikely to have been able to marry.

Who is powerless in Blake's London?

What are the cause of conflict (external & internal)?

Write your own poem about a place and your relationship with it.

Link it to your personal experience of that place.

Use images to show where power lies and how conflict is created.

Show, don't tell what it's like

Show what you like/do not like about the place, what you would like to change/ stay the same.

You can put your poems together to create a group poem about power, conflict and place - watch Lammas Students

But they’re powerless, penniless.

Their feathers clipped,

they’ve found eagles wings

in the derelict brotherhood of ganglife.

You know, that bang bang life

that shouts louder

than a sarcastic teacher clapping hands twice

and staring down a frightened nose.

They have learned that respect comes

from striking the pose that demands it,

what is Kate Tempest protesting against?

but we know : respect and fear

are not compatible.

They’re a long way from bat and ball,

they don’t play – they let daggers fall

from blood soaked fingers

while their siblings lie bleeding in hallways dead,

but, like wisdom has always said,

blood begets blood and keeps spilling,

so the pavements are stained

and our hearts are grief-stricken.

Coz round here

these cannibal kids want to be kings.

Kate tempest - Cannibal Kids

Eyes of ice stare from figures of flame.

They- puff chested, restless, nameless

– carry their pain to the point of being painless.

They’re the numb ones,

the young ones,

the new latchkeys of London,

soaking up the humdrum

and it makes them want to run from

the state they’re in.

Edited version

Full version

Kate Tempest, is inspired by William Blake. "I feel a direct connection to his work."

Kate Tempest started rapping at 16 to strangers on night buses and pestering mc's to let her on the mic at raves. Ten years later she is a published playwright, poet and respected recording artist.

She won the £10,000 TS Elliott Poetry prize.

She has written poetry for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Barnado's, Channel 4 and the BBC. She has worked with Amnesty International to create a schools pack helping secondary school children write their own protest songs, and was invited to write and perform a new poem for Aung San Suu Kyi when she recieved the Ambassador of Conscience award in Dublin.

SO now they’re shooting guns, they’re robbing cash.

They’re trying to claw a little back.

Coz when the whole pane shatters,

it always starts with a little crack

and the splinters stretch out for miles

– point fingers at sharp suits with wry crocodile smiles,

but it’s us

– we get the blame.

Told that life is all exchange.

Told that we are the children of the capital,

that we are children of apathy,

that we are the children of this rapidly changing reality.

But I say we learnt it from them.

From their rules and their ways.

Their legitimate business deceive and disgrace,

while us?

Well, we just do what we can

because we live in this place

– where the truth can’t be seen in the face.

Coz round here

these cannibal kids want to be kings,

but there aint no royalty left.

Round here the sirens and screams float on the wind

and even the street shudders,

afraid of our footsteps.

Round here,

these cannibal kids want to be kings,

but there aint no royalty left.

Round here the sirens and screams float on the wind

and even the street shudders,

yes even the street shudders,

coz of all this paranoid panic

that’s seeping through the granite of the breeze blocks,

turning our cities into sheep flocks.

I pity those whose knees knock –

the victims of the media machine,

those poor souls who’ve forgotten how to dream.

But you know that cut throat mentality?

It gets encouraged in business.

In business they tell you

that to be a success

you’ve gotta step on some necks.

So big money is made through that corporate pursuit

– they’re selling water

and they’re jailing kids for selling a couple of zoots.

We were born into blood soaked

cities of industry.

Informed of the savagery,

the infamy, the barbarity of history.

Controlled and contrived

and depressed and stressed out and vexed

and it’s a message we’ve been fed

so that we could propagate a system of division,

inhibition, viciousness and contradiction.

We were suckled on the milk that they soured

– told the future was ours,

and then disembowelled and disempowered.

We’ve been disgraced, deafened and deflowered

– our brains brutalised and our defiance devoured.

Cannibal Kids

Kate Tempest

Round here,

these cannibal kids want to be kings,

but there ain’t no royalty left.

Round here,

the sirens and screams float on the wind

and even the streets shudder, afraid of our footsteps.

Round here,

these cannibal kids want to be kings.

They don’t see that

kindness is courage

or that sympathy sings much louder than violence.

They are bitter and drained.

Eyes of ice stare from figures of flame.

They- puff chested, restless, nameless

– carry their pain to the point of being painless.

They’re the numb ones,

the young ones,

the new latchkeys of London,

soaking up the humdrum

and it makes them want to run from

the state they’re in.

But they’re powerless, penniless.

Their feathers clipped,

they’ve found eagles wings

in the derelict brotherhood of ganglife.

You know, that bang bang life

that shouts louder

than a sarcastic teacher clapping hands twice

and staring down a frightened nose.

They have learned that respect comes

from striking the pose that demands it,

but we know : respect and fear are not compatible.

They’re a long way from bat and ball,

they don’t play – they let daggers fall

from blood soaked fingers while their siblings lie bleeding in hallways dead,

but, like wisdom has always said,

blood begets blood and keeps spilling,

so the pavements are stained

and our hearts are grief-stricken.