Gillian Clarke's Poem Lament

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This essay sets out to explore some of the ways in which the poet Gillian Clarke expresses her concerns about war in her work entitled Lament Throughout this poem Gillian Clarke uses imagery and metaphors to describe the death and destruction caused by war and how it affects every aspect of natural and human life. The title ‘Lament’ sets the sad tone of the poem. A lament is an expression of grief for things which are ruined or gone. The poet uses the title to begin a list of people and creatures which have been damaged by a recent war, so every verse (and also 11 lines), begin with the preposition ‘for’ after the word ‘lament’. In other words, each item introduced by ‘for’ is being mourned. The poet has stated that this work is a response to the 1991 Gulf War, and that the details in the poem came from reports in the news. She begins with a reference to the ‘green turtle with her pulsing burden’. Normally the turtle laying her eggs at the breeding ground would be a natural wonder, the turtle would be protected by having a special area designated , but war does not respect the pregnant or vulnerable and the nest ,which should be safe and secure, is tainted by ‘sickness’. In the second stanza the poet continues to show how nature’s wonderful creatures are destroyed by war. She moves from the land to the air, but the birds have been grounded- an unnatural and life threatening state for the cormorants which are covered with oil . One device she continually uses is to link a gentle-sounding word with a destructive one. For instance, the metaphorical phrase‘in his funeral silk’ evokes the image of death which we associate with war. Silk, normally associated with a sensual, slippery fabric is here the deadly (to the bird) oil slick. She contrasts ‘The veil of iridescence on the sand’ and ‘the shadow on the sea’, the poetic ‘iridescence’ associated with an

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