Checking out Me History

Checking out me history is a unique poem with many powerful techniques, some more obvious than others. This is a technique itself; the poet uses lots of connotations and ambiguous words. In this poem the writer uses a lot of phonetics; this is because he wants the poem to be read how it's spelt, these are words like "dem" and "me", "me" is instead of "My". This shows pride, some people may interpret it wrong and think that he had bad grammar, but with this poem the poet makes it out to be as if he had a really bad education, he tells this by saying all the things that we are not taught even though they were important.

There is some sort of chorus in italics, but this could be a more serious paragraph and more intense because it is teaching you about 3 characters that have been lost and forgotten.

There is a lot of child like rhyming but then followed up by the serious italics.

John Agard uses a lot of repetition in this poem with word like "dem" this can create anger and tension, another thing that makes him angry is that black culture and history has been forgotten and neglected.

These historical characters are described by some words like "vision", "see-far" "Freedom" and "Sunrise" this could be words for being heroic and well respected. The are some of the connotations that are used in this poem, for there are many hidden meanings and what John Agard tries to do is draw you into the poem and make you start being imaginative and maybe seeking out some hidden meanings.

During the "chorus" its loses its structure that it keeps throughout the poem, there is a serious tone, and it turns to italics, the pace slows right down, and it also loses its rhyme, the pace maybe because that the writer wants people to interpret the words slowly and carefully because its explaining the neglected historical character.

I personally believe that when he talks how the poem is written that he could be taking the mick out of traditional grammar and ridicules education.