Ciaran Carson was born in Belfast, Ireland, and wrote Belfast Confetti in response to the bombings committed by both the Irish Republican Army (the IRA) and British Nationalists during The Troubles (a time of conflict between Britain and Ireland running through history up to 1996, when the Peace Agreement was triggered).
The poem focuses on what happens when a bomb goes off close to home - and how it affects your ability to communicate. Belfast Confetti Suddenly as the riot squad moved in, it was raining exclamation marks, Nuts, bolts, nails, car-keys. A fount of broken type. And the explosion. Itself - an askerisk on the map. This hyphenated line, a burst of rapid fire... I was trying to complete a sentence in my head but it kept stuttering, All the alleyways and side streets blocked with stops and colons. I know this labyrinth so well - Balaclava, Raglan, Inkerman, Odessa Street - Why can’t I escape? Every move is punctuated. Crimea Street. Dead end again. A Saracen, Kremlin-2 mesh. Makrolon face-shields. Walkie- talkies. What is My name? Where am I coming from? Where am I going? A fusillade of question- marks. What's it all about? As stated above, it is an account of a bomb attack in Belfast - most likely, the Shankill Road bombing of 1993: What's the point of view? We can assume that the first-person narrative is through the eyes of somebody on the road, during the time of the bombing. This poem is clearly focused on the effect the bomb has on an 'every man'; it doesn't seem to be the voice of someone who is directly involved in the attack. Think about the structure This is an interesting poem. Consider the opening line Suddenly as the riot squad moved in it was raining exclamation marks By opening the poem with the word "suddenly", we get a sense of the urgency of the situation. We can almost assume that before this, the narrator was just going about his normal life - we come in almost halfway through a sentence. Notice also the lack of punctuation; normally, we would see a comma after "suddenly" and "in", but we don't - which adds to the lack of chaos. Also consider this response from BBC Bitesize: The poem's form is immediately striking. Instead of neat, compact stanzas, the lines are over-long and the stanzas stretched. On closer inspection, you can see there are two stanzas, the first with five lines, the second with four. Each line, however, spills over so there are additional lines of one or two words. By presenting the poem like this, Carson is expressing the confusion caused by the riot and bomb. For example, with the phrase "And/the explosion/Itself" (lines 3-5), we even end up reading backwards as our eyes have to move from right to left across and down the page... However, through the confusion of the form and the language, we can see a narrative structure (an organised story). A demonstration has got out of hand and riot police have moved in to control it. The rioters start throwing things and there's an explosion (it is possible the nuts and bolts come from the explosion itself – time may also be confused in the poet's head). The poet runs for safety, trying to make sense of what is happening, but cannot escape. The place he knows so well becomes a trap and he runs into a check-point where he is held up and questioned by the police. And the language too This is an interesting poem in that the language we would expect to see is instead replaced by hard, cold, punctuation, perhaps suggesting that the blast was so sudden and so unexpected that it has knocked out the narrator's ability to use words. Swap "exclamation marks" for "screams" and "stops and colons" with police and debris. Carson could describe the scene if he wanted to, but he doesn't. This is very clearly a poem that focuses on the psychological confusion of being caught in a bomb - the blast takes away your ability to focus, reflect, take in information. Ironically, Carson is stuck with punctuation marks, with no words to punctuate. The language itself is harsh and unpoetic, almost primitive - take the line Nuts, bolts, nails, car-keys All simple household objects, yet when put together can produce tragedy. The language is cold, simple and forceful. Note also the car keys - a touch of humanity amongst the industrial mess. An interesting point from Bitesize focuses on the use of street names: Carson also lists the street names in lines 11-13. These work both on a literal level (they describe where he lives and how well he knows these streets) but also the metaphoric level. The streets are named after generals and battles and places from the Crimea War, a war the British fought in Victorian times against the Russians. He therefore likens the riot to a battle in a bigger war. Imagine other methods Alliteration is a big part of this poem. The poem is unstable, and lacks any real form due to its confusing nature and the state of the narrator, but what stands out is the use of the fricative consonant /f/ juxtaposed by the plosives /b/ and /k/. Most lines have these sounds - the gentle calm followed by the sudden 'crack' or 'pop' of the bomb. The use of questions at the end forces the reader to think - is the narrator asking himself these questions, or is he being interrogated? It isn't really clear, and again adds to the confusion. Consider also the juxtaposition of the weapons used by each side - the police have "makrolon face-shields" and "saracens" and "walkie-talkies", whereas the bombers have "nuts, bolts, nails and car-keys". There is an inherent divide here; the battle itself is already unequal. Poems for comparison
You can access the presentation for this lesson here:
You can learn more about The Troubles here:
0 Comments
|
An OverviewWe are studying the Conflict cluster from the Edexcel anthology. This exam is closed-book, so you will need to familiarise yourself with each poem's form, structure and language, in addition to how each poem is related, before the exam. ArchivesCategories
All
|