Judges
Another free verse contemporary poem centred on the themes of:
Power of Femininity
Religion
Embracing of one’s culture
Sexuality
Written during of the late 80’s, early 90’s, an era of recognising women’s
rights and furthering steps toward gender equality. In such a small space of
time, there was the Miner’s strike, the Women’s against PA Closures,
Abortion Rights and more Black women running for Congress than ever
before.
Structure
The poem is written in Free Verse, meaning there is no set rhythm or metre.
It varies in length, from a single line to a cinquain. This offers a more natural
tone to the poem, lending to the use of Voice;
The spacing; the line break; of the stanzas creates white space, used to single
out or to emphasise specific lines. It also adds to the visual form of the
poem, on resembling a person expressing their opinion;
Punctuation, is abundant in this poem, also highlighting specific lines in
conjunction with other devices with this purpose and offering a much more
conversational tone to the poem.
Literary Devices
Metaphor/ Allusion: “You with poodle and John Crow covers about you,
recognise them!”
Here Lorna calls out to fellow Afro-Caribbean people, to an extent the entire
Black race to remove these “John Crow” laws from themselves. Laws that
mandated the segregation of schools, public places, transport, restrooms
even fountains. Rules that limited and dehumanized black people. John
Another free verse contemporary poem centred on the themes of:
Power of Femininity
Religion
Embracing of one’s culture
Sexuality
Written during of the late 80’s, early 90’s, an era of recognising women’s
rights and furthering steps toward gender equality. In such a small space of
time, there was the Miner’s strike, the Women’s against PA Closures,
Abortion Rights and more Black women running for Congress than ever
before.
Structure
The poem is written in Free Verse, meaning there is no set rhythm or metre.
It varies in length, from a single line to a cinquain. This offers a more natural
tone to the poem, lending to the use of Voice;
The spacing; the line break; of the stanzas creates white space, used to single
out or to emphasise specific lines. It also adds to the visual form of the
poem, on resembling a person expressing their opinion;
Punctuation, is abundant in this poem, also highlighting specific lines in
conjunction with other devices with this purpose and offering a much more
conversational tone to the poem.
Literary Devices
Metaphor/ Allusion: “You with poodle and John Crow covers about you,
recognise them!”
Here Lorna calls out to fellow Afro-Caribbean people, to an extent the entire
Black race to remove these “John Crow” laws from themselves. Laws that
mandated the segregation of schools, public places, transport, restrooms
even fountains. Rules that limited and dehumanized black people. John
