LIT PAPER 1 POETRY: Fence by Mario Petrucci Assignment

Understanding

1. Who do you think is speaking in this poem? Who is he or she speaking to? What kind of a person do you think he or she is?

2. ‘This side clean. That side dirty’. What do ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ mean here?

3. ‘You must forget that soil is like skin’. In what ways might soil be like skin where fallout is concerned?

4. ‘Imagine a sheet of glass coming down from the sky’. Why does the speaker suggest this?

5. What do you think of the way the speaker answers the question ‘What if my cow leans over the fence?’

Form and Structure

6. What is the effect of using short lines and three-line stanzas in this poem?

7. Look at where the words ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ are placed in stanzas one and three. Why do you think this is?

8. Most of the lines run on in meaning to the next line, even when the next line begins a new stanza, e.g.
Or interlocking scales
on a dragon.
Look carefully at the lines where the sense runs on into the next line or stanza. Why do you think the author made the break in the line where he did?

9. Why do you think the last word in the poem is ‘stupid’?

Follow-up work

Imagine a nuclear accident has taken place in a reactor in Scotland. Write a poem or short conversation/story from the point of view either of an official explaining what has happened to a member of the public or from the point of view a member of the public wanting to know what has happened from an official.