1. Small female skull and Cliché Kid
Carol Ann duffy
Small female skull and Cliché Kid

2. Small Female skull What is the structure? Is there a rhyme scheme?
Where is the poem set? What is happening?
Why is the narrator “grinning back at the joke”?
How and why is the speaker so tender towards her skull?

3. Cliché kid What are the clichés in the poem?
How are Americanisms used?
When does a person become a cliché?
How does structure support the poem’s meaning?
What is the effect of the speaker mixing up words in the last line?

4. Mixing metaphors
do you recognise metaphors in the cliché kid and small female skull from any of the other poems in this selection?
Essay plan: Compare and Contrast how the present is affected by the past in the cliché kid and Nostalgia.
Essay plan: Compare and Contrast how self-love and self protectiveness are portrayed in small female skull and beachcomber.