Protest Poetry: Time is Running Out
Poetry is written for a variety of reasons like entertainment and expressing emotions. Poets like Oodgeroo Noonuccal (formerly Kath Walker) use poetry to express their feelings and protest against things happening in the world. Noonuccal was an indigenous Australian woman born into the Noonuccal tribe. She wrote poetry thoroughly throughout the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, demonstrating her point of view on social problems that were occurring at the time and in the past. Her poems were mostly based around environmental problems and black versus white issues that had formerly occurred. In 1970, Noonuccal published ‘Time is Running Out’ as part of her collection: ‘My people: a Kath Walker collection’. The poem
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Noonuccal has written the poem with no rhyming scheme but it follows a certain rhythm and flows through effective word choice. The first stanza has 9 lines, the second 7 and the third 10. This helps to emphasize certain points in the poem and break apart different pieces of her argument. The three stanzas also help to determine the 3 parts of the poem. The first stanza introduces the poem’s topic of the need to remove whites mining the resources of Australia. The second stanza is about how and why the mining is taking place. She explains the miners uses machines to destroy the earth and with no remorse, their only intent is to find resources and make money. Finally, the third stanza is a call to action for all Indigenous Australians to stand up and fight/protest the destructive behaviour of the miners and their machines. Incorporated into the structure of the poem is a variety of poetic techniques including …show more content…
Personification is used to convey the message that the earth has feelings, is vulnerable, abled to be injured and of great value. By personifying the earth as a woman, Noonuccal attempts to bring forth the concept of Mother Nature. Mother Nature is in all basics a woman and therefore can feel emotions and become both emotionally and mentally hurt. The miners in the poem are causing her great physical pain as they attempt to withdraw her insides. The personification used to bring forth this concept helps to bring forth the imagination in our heads of what it would feel like to have our internals slowly removed with metal machinery. Line 4 also features the personification of oil in which Noonuccal calls it ‘black blood’. Blood is something that escapes our body whenever we are wounded on the skin, so Noonuccal mentions this in an attempt to bring forth the point that mining is causing wounds on the earth’s surface and miners are extracting oil which is the equivalent of blood for the earth. The personifying of the earth when looked at deeply also reveals that Noonuccal has written the poem in a way that mentions that the earth has a heart. This heart experiences feelings and emotions. In the case of the poem this feelings are of sadness and remorse as the miners mine into the surface. Giving the earth a heart makes people more sorrowful as they too have experienced the
“a verse for the cheated” is written in free verse as it has no rhyming scheme and lines of varied length. The poem has a reflective tone as it reflects on the way that Aboriginals have been treated in the past in Australia. A sad tone is depicted in the poem as it discusses the negative effects of colonialism, and allows the audience to consider their situation.
The poem is written in the style of free verse. The poet chooses not to separate the poem into stanzas, but only by punctuation. There is no rhyme scheme or individual rhyme present in the poem. The poems structure creates a personal feel for the reader. The reader can personally experience what the narrator is feeling while she experiences stereotyping.
This is evident through the line, “Rain come down! Rain come down!” (Noonuccal p.56). Noonuccal utilises repetition in order to emphasis on the collective voices that are chanting as well as the sound of rain being repeated. Additionally, Noonuccal further expresses the connection to the land as well as to the Country through the line, “the universal sound of heavy rain” (p.58). This conveys the collective voices chanting about nature which further links an Aboriginal connection to the Country as well as to the Land. Moreover, Noonuccal utilises imagery as well as sonic elements through, “leafy boughs, rattling gravel” and “toneless monotone” (p.58) in order to depict that natural elements are also chanting. This further portrays the natural elements interacting with the human voices through the chanting as well as the collective sound having a cooperative value to
7. The personification in the second stanza is that she gives poems the ability to hide and are waiting to be found. The author states that poems are hiding in the bottom of your shoes, and they are the shadows drifting across your ceiling before you wake up. This is personification because she gives the poems traits that only a living organism can possess.
Noonuccal outlines how we prejudicially alienate one another and fight over skin tone. Nonuccal mentions, "I'm for all humankind, not colour gibes, I'm international, never mind tribes," which uses regular rhyme scheme to create a sense of certainty and finality to each line which communicates her message in a determined tone. This emphasises the unjust way we quarrel against one another based on skin colour. The rhyme scheme is consistent and goes on to manifest our differences in life but how that does not mean we should fight about it. Noonuccal illustrates how we are prejudiced towards others because of race when she writes, "black tribe, yellow tribe, red white or brown" and "Black, white or brown race, yellow race or red,". Noonuccal plays with the convention of anaphora by slightly changing the phrases to outline that while we different in some ways, we are mostly the same and should not be separated in terms of race. Just as the second quote mirrors the first one we also reflect each other. Although we look slightly different on the outside, we are "all one race" hence the title. Noonuccal writes, "I'm international, never mind place; I'm for humanity, all one race,". This summarises her whole poem by using a combination of first person and inclusive language bringing together all her points about how we are all the
The first stanza describes the depth of despair that the speaker is feeling, without further explanation on its causes. The short length of the lines add a sense of incompleteness and hesitance the speaker feels towards his/ her emotions. This is successful in sparking the interest of the readers, as it makes the readers wonder about the events that lead to these emotions. The second and third stanza describe the agony the speaker is in, and the long lines work to add a sense of longing and the outpouring emotion the speaker is struggling with. The last stanza, again structured with short lines, finally reveals the speaker 's innermost desire to "make love" to the person the speaker is in love
The author puts into light some of the daily horrors of these people. Some of these passages are horrific. The work conditions were anything but clean and safe. The poem touches on how the people were around chemicals, inhaling poison. He goes on about the dangers of going to the canning factories with no safety or labor restrictions. Even though work conditions were
Ravikovitch uses an analogy for the overall poem. Comparing rocks to people. She uses this analogy to show that a person can be hurt, but never show it, then one day crack and crumble. Just like a rock will sit there for years, and suddenly crack. Within the poem, she uses metaphors, such as, “the rock has an open wound,” comparing the rocks crack to an open wound, showing the similarities between humans and rocks. Ravikovitch uses repetition of the word years in the first part of the poem to emphasize that a rock can go so long appearing to be unharmed, even for years, until they finally get a crack, as well as with people. She also uses personification. Ravikovitch personifies the rock to show the similarity between rocks and people, and how two things that are so different, can be so similar. The overall message that Ravikovitch is trying to convey, is that even though rocks are tough, they still crack, as do people. A person can be hurt but never show it, then all of a sudden crumble. Even the strongest boulders have cracks.
The poet shows that this simple, pleasant memory and how it re-in-acts his childhood. The way in which the windmills squeaks and groans to bring water from the ground whereas during the period of rain they work in harmony, as the rain comes down. The poem is gentle and nostalgic. It seeks not only to recreate the scene for the reader, but to have the reader feel the day to day struggle of living in the hash Australian outback, the struggle of agriculture during a drought.
Chaos and drudgery are common themes throughout the poem, displayed in its form; it is nearly iambic pentameter, but not every line fits the required pattern. This is significant because the poem’s imperfect formulation is Owen making a statement about formality, the poem breaks the typical form to show that everything is not functioning satisfactorily. The poem’s stanza’s also begin short, but become longer, like the speaker’s torment and his comrades movement away from the open fire. The rhyming scheme of ABABCDCD is one constant throughout the poem, but it serves to reinforce the nature of the cadence as the soldiers tread on. The war seems to drag on longer and longer for the speaker, and represents the prolonged suffering and agony of the soldier’s death that is described as the speaker dwells on this and is torn apart emotionally and distorts his impressions of what he experiences.
“Winter-cracked trees, ragged cabbages, dishevelled pink chrysanthemums”; even nature surrounding the house is ugly. They are struggling to grow against the polluted atmosphere but are fighting a losing battle. Also the environment in other parts such as the fields which were “dreary and forsaken” and the “tarred fowl house” tells us that nature is not at its best at the moment. “Flames like red sores licking its ashy sides” is like an injury which will take a long time to heel. The miners which are unnamed “passed like shadows” is a simile to describe how blackened they were from the coal.
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.
He personifies nature as being a woman with a personality and emotions. He plays on the role of “Mother Nature” by giving nature womanly qualities. The thought of a woman and nature creates a comforting idea about nature being a nature part of life. This creates a more efficient effect upon the reader; the reader can relate more to nature and feel more comfortable. “She has a voice of gladness, and a smile of and eloquence of beauty” (5-6).
First of alll, the poem is divided into nine stanzas, where each one has four lines. In addition to that, one can spot a few enjambements for instance (l.9-10). This stylistic device has the function to support the flow of the poem. Furthermore, it is crucial to take a look at the choice of words, when analysing the language.
The poem consists of 33 lines, which are divided into seven stanzas. Six of seven stanzas have four lines, whereas the last stanza has nine lines. Moreover, the poem has an alternate rhyme, although there are some exceptions to it. The metre used in the poem is trochee.