1. The City Planners By Margaret Atwood By Kaitlyn, Han bin, and Sophie

2. Who am I? What do I write? Who were my influences? My writing style My contemporaries The poem -ThemeTheme -AnalysisAnalysis -StructureStructure What you might be asked about it…!

3.  Born 18 November 1939  A Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist  Began writing at age 6  Became a poet at the age of 16  Her parents encouraged her to read and learn the importance of education  Winner of The Canadian Bookseller's Association Award, 1977 and London Literature Award, 1999 Who am I?

4.  Margaret Attwood wrote romance, historical fiction, speculative fiction, science fiction and dystopian fiction along with:  Double Persephone; Hawkshead Press, 1961; pamphlet.  Kaleidoscopes Baroque: a poem; Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1965.  Talismans For Children; Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1965.  Speeches For Doctor Frankenstein; Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1966.  Marsh, Hawk; Dreadnaught, 1977.  Notes Towards a Poem That Can Never Be Written; Salamander Press, 1981.  Snake Poems; Salamander Press, 1983. What do I write?

5. o Margaret Atwood was influenced a lot by her parents. She was already writing by age 5 and was home-schooled until 8 th grade o She looked greatly up to Northrop Frye who was her English professor o Her traveling experience was also a major influence o Many famous people also influenced her, such as William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, John Buchan, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Alice Munro, Jack London and many more Who were my influences?

6.  Margaret Atwood’s style of writing is has a great sense of “private” myth and “personal” expression  Atwood writes in an exact, vivid and witty style in her poetry  Her writing is often unsparing in its gaze at pain and unfairness  She has alternated between My writing style

7.  Charles Henri Ford (1913–2002), poet, novelist, editor  John Faulkner (1901–1963), plain-style writer  M. Carl Holman (1919–1988), author/poet/playwright  Ellen Gilchrist (born 1935), novelist/poet/short story writer  Muna Lee (1895–1965), author and poet  Al Young (born 1939), poet/novelist/essayist/screenwriter My contemporaries

8. The poem give momentary access to the landscape behind or under the future cracks in the plaster when the houses, capsized, will slide obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers that right now nobody notices. That is where the City Planners with the insane faces of political conspirators are scattered over unsurveyed territories, concealed from each other, each in his own private blizzard; guessing directions, they sketch transitory lines rigid as wooden borders on a wall in the white vanishing air tracing the panic of suburb order in a bland madness of snows

9.  People are ignorant  People can be blinded by only the good side  The structure of this poem is like Singapore, it’s planned out and the stanza’s are highly structured. This poem has 7 stanza’s that grow smaller  There is no rhyme scheme in this poem  There is a a large change between stanza’s 2 and 3, people are now included Structure/Theme

10.  “pedantic rows” is the people and how they are very repetitive  “sanitary” is repeated, showing how clean things are in Singapore, too clean  “momentary” and “transitory” are talking about how nothing in the city is temporary  “discouraged grass” is a metaphor for the people of Singapore and how they are forced to be kept in the same level  “nobody notices” is showing how people are ignorant and don’t care and how people don’t want to face the fact that the city is being overrun  “bland madness of snows” is the blind city and the blind people. Also, “bland” doesn’t fit Singapore and seems ironic  “private blizzard” is describing how the City Planners are in the middle of the blizzard and are so caught up in what their doing, they don’t realize what happening outside  There is lots of en jambement to make the poem go faster and have no control Analysis

11.  Explore the ways in which the poet vividly conveys her feelings about love.  Explore some descriptions you find particularly effective.  Show how the poet finds beauty in the world.  How do the poet’s words vividly reveal her feelings to you?  Explore the ways in which the poet appeals so powerfully to your senses in this poem. IGCSE Exam-Style Questions