Summary
English Lit: AQA GCSE Poetry - Power & Conflict, topic 10.1.1
Summary of Poppies
Jane Weir wrote Poppies as a dramatic monologue, which is a form of poetry where an imagined speaker addresses a silent audience. In Poppies, a mother speaks to her son who is presumably going off to war. Weir herself describes the poem as a “contemporary war poem”.
Summary
- The mother reminisces about the day he left and the way her memories are brought back on Armistice Sunday.
Influence
- With the news filled with stories of conflict – for example, in Iraq and Afghanistan – the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, asked several poets to write on this theme.
- Weir was interested in the voice of women involved in conflict, which she believed were often silenced. So she chose to focus on the grief of a mother and the pain of letting her child go.
Key Ideas in Poppies
Here are some of the key ideas Jane Weir explores in Poppies:
Parents and children
- This poem is a depiction of a mother’s pain and grief as she sends her son to war.
- It explores the difficulty parents face allowing their children to become independent and enter the world.
- There is a contrast between the sadness and nostalgia of the mother and the son’s freedom.
- The mother tries to preserve the son’s childishness and reminisces about the games they used to play as a child.
- She is coming to terms with the fact that she can no longer keep him safe in the same way she could when he was small.
Loneliness and loss
- Loneliness and loss are key themes.
- There are hints that the son has died as she visits the war memorial on Armistice Sunday, but this is unclear.
Strength and bravery of war victims
- Weir celebrates the strength and bravery of those left behind in war - the victims of war who don’t risk their own lives but still suffer.
Test yourself on Summary
How did Weir describe the poem Poppies?
Who wrote the poem Poppies?
Which of these are true of Poppies?
Which of these themes or concepts was Weir particularly interested in?
Which of these are ideas explored or presented in Poppies?