1. Starter
 Your
homework was to use SMILE to
annotate your poem.
 Work
with the people on your table
to discuss and add to your
annotations…
 Add any additional ideas and seek
help.
5 minutes

2. Monday, 24th
February 2014
Poetry
L.O: To analyse the imagery
in Hawk Roosting by Ted
Hughes

3. Hawk Roosting
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
The convenience of the high trees!
The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth’s face upward for my inspection.
My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads –
The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:
The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

4. The poet
Ted Hughes was born near Halifax, West Yorkshire in 1930. His father
was a carpenter and a veteran of World War One. Although his family
moved when he was eight years old, the landscape of his birthplace had
a huge impact on his writing. He went to Cambridge in the 1950s where
he read English Literature, Anthropology and Archaeology. While at
Cambridge, he met his first wife, Sylvia Plath, whom he married in
1956.
After university he had various jobs, including working in a zoo,
teaching and reading scripts at Pinewood Studios. Sylvia Plath and Ted
Hughes had two children but later separated. In the year after their
separation she committed suicide. Hughes’ next relationship was with
Assia Wevill. They lived together and she looked after his children
from his first marriage. However, she also committed suicide, gassing
herself and her daughter in a manner similar to that of Plath.
In 1970, Hughes married Carol Orchard and they remained together
until his death. In 1984 Hughes became Poet Laureate and held the
post until his death. He died in 1998, shortly after the publication of
Birthday Letters, a collection of poems about his relationship with
Sylvia Plath. His ashes were scattered on Dartmoor.

5. Hawk Roosting
‘Hawk Roosting’ was published in 1960 as part
of Hughes’ second book, Lupercal. It is one of
many poems that he wrote about nature and
the natural world.
At the time of writing Hughes was living with
his wife Sylvia Plath, in America.

6. Imagery


In pairs
Choose what you think is the most striking image
in the poem. Then prepare an explanation saying:

what the image is
what it means in your own words
why you think it is striking.

These do not have to be lengthy explanations.



Each pair should write their chosen image onto
the A3 sheet and prepare to share with the
class

7. Classifying the images
 In
small groups (on your table) write the categories
onto cards and classify each image as either
positive or negative.
 While discussing you should be questioning what
makes something positive or negative; discussing
the process of making value judgements.
 Each
group will feed back to the class.

8. Alternatives
 Think
of other ways the images could be
divided into groups or categorised,
 Look for links and make creative connections.
 For example, you could try placing the images
under headings such as arrogance, violence and
enjoyment. The important thing is not that you
find categories that work absolutely, but to
find categories that work.

9. Review
 Which
image do you feel is most important
when relating this poem to the theme of
power and control?
 Why?
 Write
a sentence summarising your ideas.

10.  Look
at the pronouns used in the poem.
 List
the different ones used and count the
number of times they are used.
 What
might this suggest about the poem
and its narrator?

11. Wednesday,
26th February
2014
Poetry
L.O: To analyse the language
in Hawk Roosting by Ted
Hughes

12. Control and ownership
 List
all the nouns used in the poem.
 something
that is part of the hawk
 a natural phenomenon
 something that the hawk thinks it owns or
controls.
 Use
highlighters or coloured pencils to indicate
which category each word belongs to.

13. 1. How does the poet create a sense of the
hawk's superiority?
2. Why do you think the poem is written in
present tense?
3. Could this poem be linked to the
government and political leaders? If so how?
4. Is the reader supposed to agree with the
hawk's opinion of itself?
5. Why do you think the poet has chosen a
hawk to convey his opinions?

14. Thursday, 27th
February 2014
Poetry
L.O: To analyse the language
and structure of Hawk
Roosting by Ted Hughes

15. Hawk Roosting
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
The convenience of the high trees!
The air’s buoyancy and the sun’s ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth’s face upward for my inspection.
My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads –
The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:
The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.
Structure - Look closely at
each stanza . What do you
notice? What does this link
to?
Punctuation - Track the use
of punctuation. Why are
there so many end stopped
lines?
 Meaning – What is the main
theme of the poem?

Imagery - What extended
metaphor is used
in the poem?
 Language – What language
features have been used
and why?
 Effect – How does the poet
feel about the subject? Are
you being offered a
message or a view of things
the writer wants you to
share or understand? If so,
what?


16. Structure - Turning points

Identify a turning point in the poem. A place where
the mood or topic changes.

One school of thought about this poem suggests that
there is a turning point in the poem – line 13.


The theory is that the poem revolves around that
point as the hawk thinks the world turns around it.
Another school of thought holds that the mood of the
poem changes several times and so there are several
turning points.

17. THINK – PAIR - SHARE
This poem is just about a
hawk…


Some people have suggested that it is really about people’s
arrogance, the attitudes of those in power, rich people and
even Satan.
However, others have argued that Hughes’ nature poems are
just about nature and so the poem is just about a hawk.

CHOOSE ONE OF THE TOPICS BELOW. Discuss in pairs-5
minutes-Then write a response.

This is a poem about humans rather than a hawk. Discuss.

This is a poem about power. Do you agree?

18. Review
 Peer
assessment – swap your work and mark
with…