1

National Poetry Day postcards, Scotland 2012
teachers’ notes

Tracey Herd, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

THE POET AND HER WORK

Tracey Herd was born in East Kilbride in 1968 and now lives in Dundee. She studied English and American Studies at the University of Dundee, graduating in 1991. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 1993, and in 1995 was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Bursary. Her first collection, No Hiding Place (Bloodaxe, 1996) was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection, and her second collection, Dead Redhead (2001) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. From 1998-2001, she was Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Dundee, and from 2009–11 she was the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the same university.

THE POEM

‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ is from Tracey Herd’s second collection, Dead Redhead (Bloodaxe, 2001), and is reproduced on NPD2012 postcards and pdf posters by permission of Bloodaxe Books.

  • Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a novella by Truman Capote (1924–1984), first published in 1958; it was made into a film, starring Audrey Hepburn, in 1961.
  • The main character in both is Holly Golightly.
  • The song ‘Moon River’ was written for the film, by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer.
  • Tiffany’s is a luxury-goods store in New York.
  • The epigraph is taken from Fitzgerald’s novella A Diamond as Big as the Ritz (1922).
  • The poem is written in the form of a villanelle.

READING THE POEM – NOTES & QUESTIONS

Breakfast at Tiffany’s – both novella and film – feature a range of characters, but the poem features only Holly Golightly.

  • Why do you think the poet has omitted everyone else?
  • What is the overall mood of the poem?
  • Do you think the poem is broadly optimistic or pessimistic? Why?

Look at the way the poem rhymes.

  • What full rhymes can you find? And what near-rhymes?
  • Counting near-rhymes (such as ‘York’ and ‘dark’, or ‘gone’ and ‘gown’) as full rhymes, write out a rhyme scheme for the poem, so beginning aba.
  • How does such a rhyme scheme affect your understanding of the poem?
  • Consider how diamonds are described during the poem – in lines 3, 9, 15, 19.
  • Based on the epigraph, the poem is about ‘diamonds… and disillusion’. How are the two connected in the poem?

The cover of Dead Redhead says that “The heroines [of these] poems…are vibrant, defiant women who give themselves to life, only to be betrayed by those they believe as well as by their own dreams.”

  • To what extent is this true of the character in the poem?

DISCUSSION
New York

  • What are your impressions of New York?
  • How do you think these have been formed – visits to the city, seeing it on film or tv, from news reports, reading about it?
  • If you’ve been there, what would you recommend about the city?
  • If you haven’t been, would you like to go there? Why?

Holly Golightly

  • If you have heard of Holly Golightly before, what impression do you have of her (outwith the poem, that is)?
  • If you haven’t heard of her before, what impression do you get of her, from the poem, and from her name?

RESEARCH

Diamonds have long been considered valuable.

  • What is a diamond?
  • Where do they come from?
  • How are they traded?
  • Why are they valuable?
  • What is a ‘blood diamond’?
  • How are diamonds used in industry?

CREATIVE ACTIVITY

Write a villanelle about a person you admire – a real-life figure, or someone from a book.

  • Read other examples of villanelles, such Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do Not Go Gently Into That Dark Night’, Sylvia Plath’s ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song’, or Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘One Art’.
  • Be clear about the form – it is outlined on Wikipedia, at

Choose who you’ll write about, then make some notes such as

  • where they live
  • their physical appearance, including what they wear
  • objects, places and music associated with them

Then you need to get your first stanza right.

  • It has just three lines, with lines one and three rhyming – but these two are the important lines, as they are repeated several times.
  • In fact these two lines give you eight lines of the nineteen you need to complete the poem.

Remember the form is flexible.

  • Tracey Herd repeats line one exactly; the repetitions of line three always include “diamond” (or “diamonds”) and the “the dark”, while the rest of the line changes.
  • She also uses near-rhymes, rather than full rhymes. This gives a particular ‘tone’, of things almost but not quite connecting – as well as opening up the range of rhyme-words available.
  • Consider if you wish to use near-rhymes or full-rhymes – again, think of the differing effects which can be created, as well as of the practicalities of finding rhymes.

Remember that, because of their repetitions, villanelles don’t lend themselves to telling a story –rather they create a mood, an atmosphere, an ambience – so if your poem isn’t working, try re-ordering your images.

FURTHER READING & LINKS
Books by Tracey Herd

No Hiding Place(Bloodaxe, 1996)

Dead Readhead (Bloodaxe, 2001)
Other books

A History of Twentieth-century British Women’s Poetry, by Jane Dowson and Alice Entwistle (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Identity Parade: new British & Irish poets, edited by Roddy Lumsden(Bloodaxe, 2010)

Websites


SPL page on Tracey Herd

Includes a selection of poems
***
Ken Cockburn

July 2012

National Poetry Day Scotland & loads more ideas for working with poetry