Identify and Explain How Lochhead Creates a Nostalgic Tone in for Her Grandmother Knitting

Identify and explain how Lochhead creates a nostalgic tone in For Her Grandmother Knitting any other of her works.

Commonality – 2

• Explain what the poem 1 has in common with the question
• Explain what poem 2/3/4 has in common
• Explain how the poems deal with it similarly or differently

Primary – 2

From the extract

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Secondary – 6

Different poem – anything you are not given. You can use up to 5 different poems to get this done!

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Commonality

• For My Grandmother Knitting is a poem that deals with the memories of an aging lady who is reflecting on her past, using imagery of her hands to link the memories

• Some old Photographs tells the story of memories captured in time as if from a photo album, preserved and observed through rose-tinted glasses
• Both poems create a sense of looking back at the past in a positive nature, missing what has been and reflecting on the passing of time, therefore effectively creating a nostalgic tone.

Primary

• Repetition

• “once”
• The word once is repeated a number of times in the poem, indicating that the narrator is looking back wistfully, therefore feeling nostalgic

• There is a continuous image of “hands” throughout
• “the working of your hands”
• The hands have decayed over time and by looking back over how her hands used to be and used to perform, the narrator is using a comparison for her own age, therefore forming a nostalgic feeling.

Secondary

Some Old Photographs

• synaesthesia
• “evocative as scent”
• the narrator’s memories are preserved so well they are unlocking all her senses. This vividness creates a nostalgic tone.

• word choice
• “romance”
• The writer says the dark storm clouds have “romance”, showing that when reflecting on the past everything feels and looks better than it perhaps was at the time: nostalgia.

• allusion
• “starlings swarming”
• This is in reference to a poem by Edwin Morgan called The Starlings of George Square. In this, the starlings are a nuisance but Morgan likes them and finds them uplifting. This reference allows us to see that Lochhead sees beauty within negative memories; is nostalgic.

• enjambment is used throughout the poem
• This creates a sense of flicking between images as one might flick through photographs in an album, reiterating the nostalgic tone created by Lochhead as she is looking back over photos.

• verb tenses and changes in these
• “still-lovely” “laughs”
• These verbs are in the present but the memories are in the past, this reiterates the joy that is in the past and how it is recalled

• contrast
• “drops on a rainmate are sequins”
• Something from the past that isn’t particularly glamorous or spectacular (the rainmate) has been remembered and glamorised (sequins). This makes nostalgia very apparent.