Catrin // Gillian Clarke
Although this poem made only a tiny portion of my year 10 English anthology, its short and simple nature struck a cord with me and was, without a doubt, one of the most enjoyable things to study.
The poem is about Clarke’s daughter, and follows their slightly troubled relationship from birth to teens. However, what made this poem so appealing is that its content is universal. It speaks truthfully about the relationship between a mother and child that can relate to most people and can be translated across countless countries and cultures. This perhaps made the poem better to study as it’s easy to understand the depth of the content in it. Clarke herself said she wrote the piece to answer the question ‘why did my beautiful baby have to become a teenager?:’ a question that I’m sure many of our parents have wondered (my mum included).
To the delight of me and my fellow lazy classmates, the poem is packed full of complex metaphors and has a wealth of avenues to explore in the literary sense. This allowed me to write more in depth about the poems and the characters within them and, let me tell you, there is nothing better for an English enthusiast (and slightly apathetic student) than being able to make an essay from two sentences.
So, there it is. It’s the rare finds such as this that one realises that, although it can be repugnant at times, education allows us to discover what we truly enjoy. That was certainly the case with this beautiful creation and it is still, to this day, my favourite thing to have studied.
Words by Joe Lewin