Gwen Harwood (Two poems) A reflective tone is achieved by Harwoods graphic depiction of her changing relationship with her

father over time. In the first part, a child commits an horrendous act while the second part shows a role reversal where the father is now in need of support. His former compassion is now matched by hers. Growing up and growing old are triggered by the cruel actions of an uncomprehending child. The young and rebellious master of life and death is appalled by what she does. Value laden terms and truncated statement is made more confronting by the poets use of caesura in the line, My first shot struck. He swayed. Harwood forces us to witness the gruesome scene which leaves the child afraid and lonely watching the, obscene/bundle of stuff that dropped. Her emotional distress is inferred by the term obscene while the colloquial term stuff emphasises the shocking loss of life she has caused. Sibilance, enjambment and evocative diction encourage us to share her guilt and shameful insight, I saw. Poetic techniques such as visual imagery help create immediacy and place the reader in another time and place, alongside the girl in the barn. Death and sorrow combine to shatter the child who believed death clean. Her desire to gain power and authority over her father has come at a high cost, shattering any feeling of supremacy or domination. With her thoughtless and callous act, she has learned a tragic lesson in life. (242)

A fragrant smell triggers a deeply personal memory of childhood in the poem The Violets which takes the poet back in time and conjures up a longing for reconnection with nature. A regular five stanza structure combines with an irregular rhyming scheme to mimic how time and age can be fractured by a memory of the melting west is striped like ice cream. Metaphor and simile are used to capture time and place in a vivid way that the reader can envisage. Mood swings throughout the poem chart the poets changing emotional response. Direct speech helps stress the contrast of child and adult, past and present. Nature has the potential to heal and console and Harwood communicates a nostalgic yearning for the lost security of childhood. Her dissatisfaction is highlighted through visual imagery, as a black bird frets and strops his beak. The remembered scene is also described through onomatopoeia and the recollection of a fathers whistled trill. A lack of punctuation and the use of indentation in the following three stanzas give a jarring sense to the poems flow. Repetition in Ambiguous light. Ambiguous sky links back to a memory of a frightful waking when still a child. The word ambiguous reinforces the waking childs terrible sense of loss, wheres morning gone? Feeling hungry and cross at the loss of time, she is comforted and reassured by her parents. Harwoods use of poetic techniques and creative structure has created an idealistic family scene. Light imagery is also used with alliterative emphasis to bring the past vividly to life. Reference to light the lamp sums up the comfort found in childhood but the passage of time and the death of loved ones has since distanced those lamp lit presences. The power of imagination and nature however has rekindled a magical moment that can never be lost. (306)