1. LO: To understand and analyse poetry.
Half Past Two
LO: To understand and analyse poetry.

2. What might the poem be about?
Half Past Two
What does this make you think of?

3. Poetic techniques
Mix and match the poetic techniques to the meanings.

4. U A Fanthorpe ( )
Ursula Askham Fanthorpe spent her earliest years in Kent. She attended St Anne's College Oxford afterwards becoming a teacher and ultimately Head of English at Cheltenham Ladies' College. However, she only began writing when she turned her back on her teaching career to become a receptionist at a psychiatric hospital.
Talking of her war-time childhood Fanthorpe said, "I think it's important not to run away" and on the surface her poetry seems to encapsulate those traditional English values we associate with the period.
She regarded a poem "as a conversation between the poet and the reader" and this is evident in her characterful and engaging delivery. Many of the poems are for two or more voices.
Taken from -

5. Read the poem

6. WRITE THIS INTO YOUR NOTEBOOK!
Summary
WRITE THIS INTO YOUR NOTEBOOK!
What is the poem about?
SUMMARISE the poem in bullet points with your partner

7. Themes Memory Childhood Relationships Growing up
Look at these themes, discuss with the person next to you how these themes are presented in the poem.
Memory
Childhood
Relationships
Growing up

8. Themes – what do we learn about them
Memory – an adult nostalgically remembering the past and a child learning to remember important things.
Childhood – the control of adults and the lack of knowledge you have.
Relationships – the complex relationship between the child and the teacher or person in authority who is not part of your family.
Growing up – learning about the world and coping with the confusion of adult or scary issues and “grown-up” things like time.

9. Poetic techniques
Using the techniques from earlier see if you can identify any of these in the text.
Once you have found them, discuss with someone next to you what each technique might tell us about a theme or the subject.

10. Language Find examples of the following techniques and their effect
Capital letters are used to emphasise the fear and confusion of the situation, the teacher and of time.
Personification shows us the imagination of the student.
Compound words show us the boy’s experience of the world and highlight his childishness.

11. Language Find examples of the following techniques and their effect
Repetition of words linked with time emphasise the loss and confusion he feels.
Hyperbole and onomatopoeia emphasise his childlike, innocent approach to the world.
Word choices, in particular verbs, start the action again and break the boy’s daydream.
Allusion to fairy-tales which helps to focus the reader’s attention on the child’s particular experience.

12. Language Possible examples
Capital letters – ‘Something Very Wrong’
Personification – ‘Where time hides tick-less waiting to be born.’
Compound words – ‘Timeformykisstime’
Repetition – ‘schooltime’ ‘into ever’
Hyperbole – ‘he’d escaped for ever’, onomatopoeia – ‘click’
Word choices – ‘scuttling’ and ‘slotted’
Allusion – ‘Once upon a …’

13. WRITE THIS INTO YOUR NOTEBOOK!
Structure
Written in free verse (no rhyme and rhythm) and consists of eleven three line stanzas. This lack of strict or rigid form helps to highlight the boy’s confusion and feelings of being lost in time.
Caesura and enjambment also contribute to this but also to the pace of the poem. Both devices aid the nostalgia and the boy’s feelings of detachment from reality as one thought flows into another (enjambment) in a dazed way or end abruptly or are interrupted suddenly (caesura) in a panicked way.

14. WRITE THIS INTO YOUR NOTEBOOK!
Structure
A narrative poem nostalgically describing a childhood memory through an omniscient persona, though one who seems to have been present at the event. The omniscient voice helps add to the fairy-tale quality of the poem.
These structural features emphasise the fantastical and nostalgic nature of the poem.
The speaker seems to be the boy who has now grown up and is remembering or the teacher who is remembering this event. Either way, the adult’s comments are in brackets.

15. WRITE THIS INTO YOUR NOTEBOOK!
Imagery
Fanthorpe uses various types of imagery. Here are a few types seen in the poem. With your partner, write down an example and the effect of each.
ORGANIC
VISUAL
OLFACTORY
AUDITORY

16. WRITE THIS INTO YOUR DIARY!
Homework…
A paragraph explaining how a theme is presented in the poem.