Topic Summaries

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GCSE > English > AQA > GCSE AQA English Literature Power and Conflict Poetry Topic Summaries > ‘Storm on the Island’ by Seamus Heaney > Annotations
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‘Bayonet Charge’ by Ted Hughes

‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

‘Checking Out Me History’ by John Agard

‘The Emigrée’ by Carol Rumens

‘Kamikaze’ by Beatrice Garland

'My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning

‘Ozymandias’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley

‘The Prelude’ by William Wordsworth

‘Remains’ by Simon Armitage

‘Storm on the Island’ by Seamus Heaney

‘War Photographer’ by Carol Ann Duffy

Key ideas to compare between poems

We are prepared: we build our houses squat,

Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.

The wizened earthhad never troubled us

With hay, so as you can see, there are nostacks

Or stooks that can be lost. Norare there trees

Which might prove company when it blows full

Blast: you know what I mean– leaves and branches

Can raise a chorus in a gale

So that you can listen to the thing you fear

Forgetting that it pummelsyour house too.

But there are no trees, no natural shelter.

You might think that the sea is company,

Exploding comfortably down on the cliffs

But no: when it begins, the flung sprayhits

The very windows, spits like a tame cat

Turned savage. We just sit tightwhile wind dives

And strafes invisibly. Space is a salvo.

We are bombarded by the empty air.

Strange, it is a huge nothingthat we fear

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