AS - Level Poetry Praise song for_my_mother

1. Praise Song for My Mother
Grace Nicohols

2. What connotations do the following
words have for you?
• Water
• Moon
• Sunrise
How about the following adjectives?
– rise; warm; streaming
– deep; bold; fathoming
•
– pull; grained; mantling
• Is it possible to match the nouns with
the adjectives?

3. Personal associations
• Think of a meal and a living thing (e.g.
plant, tree) which have particularly powerful
‘homely’ associations for you.
• For me:
• Barbequed lamb and greek salad
• The kowhai tree outside my parent’s home

4. For me:
Barbequed lamb chops Kowhai tree with a tui

5. Grace Nichols
• Grace Nichols is a Guyanese poet. She was born in Georgetown (a
small coastal village), Guyana, in 1950. After working in Guyana as a
teacher and journalist, she immigrated to the UK in 1977.
• Much of her poetry is characterised by Caribbean rhythms and
culture, and influenced by Guyanese and Amerindian folklore.
• Her religion is Christianity after she was influenced by the UK's many
religions and multi-cultural society. Her partner is Guyanese poet
John Agard.
• She has a strong interest in Guyanese folk tales, Amerindian myths
and the South American Aztec and Inca civilisations. Her poems
often express a Caribbean philosophy, sometimes directly
contrasting with the spirit of the UK.
• After beginning her relationship with Agard, she and her daughter
Lesley accompanied him on his move to England; the couple would
go on to have a daughter of their own, Kalera. Away from the
Caribbean, Nichols began to write poetry more frequently
• http://anthology.aqa.org.uk/index.asp?CurrMenu=12&T=16#16
• http://www.contemporarywriters.com

6. Praise Songs
• The praise song is ‘one of the most widely used poetic forms in Africa;
a series of laudatory epithets applied to
gods, men, animals, plants, and towns that capture the essence of the
object being praised. Professional bards, who may be both praise
singers to a chief and court historians of their tribe, chant praise
songs…’.
• Homework:
Look up laudatory, essence, bard and epithet and explain them.
The praise song is not part of Western cultures, though the ‘eulogy’ is a
similar form.
Research the terms eulogy and obituary, and some examples
and, again, discuss similarities and differences. (Eulogies are usually pros
and written about a person who has just died. They are almost always
positive. Interestingly, African praise songs can include negative things as
well as positive; indeed, they are intended to be descriptive rather than
simply laudatory).

7. Background - Praise Songs
Example of chant praise song for the great Zulu chieftain Shaka:
He is Shaka the unshakeable,
Thunderer-while-sitting, son of Menzi.
He is the bird that preys on other birds,
The battle-axe that excels over other battle-axes.
He is the long-strided pursuer, son of Ndaba,
Who pursued the sun and the moon.
He is the great hubbub like the rocks of Nkandla
Where elephants take shelter
When the heavens frown…
Although he is expected to know all of the traditional phrases handed down by word
of mouth in his tribe, the bard is also free to make additions to existing poems. Thus
the praise songs of Shango, the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning, might contain a
modern comparison of the god to the power and noise of a railway.
Among some Bantu-speaking peoples, the praise song is an important form of oral
literature. The Sotho of Lesotho required all boys undergoing initiation to compose
praises for themselves that set forth the ideals of action or manhood. Sotho bards also
composed traditional praises of chiefs and warriors, and even a very young man was
allowed to create praises of himself if he had performed feats of great courage.

8. Background - Praise Songs
These praise songs were recited as follows: the reciter stood in an open space, visible to all
assembled. He then began reciting in a high voice, punctuating his victories in war by
stabbing the ground with his spear, until he had set forth not only his lineage and the
battles in which he had fought but his entire life history. Sotho praises are telegraphic,
leaving much to the listener’s imagination; their language is poetic, and the sequence of
events not necessarily logical. Metaphor is a key device for suggesting worth (a reciter
might call himself a ferocious animal), and poetic license is granted for coining new words.
To the subjects used by the Sotho, the Tswana of Botswana add women, tribal groups,
domestic (especially cattle) and wild animals, trees, crops, various features of the
landscape, and divining bones. Their praise songs consist of a succession of loose stanzas
with an irregular number of lines and a balanced metrical form. Experiences such as going
abroad to work for Europeans have become a subject of recent praise poems, and
recitation has been extended from tribal meetings and ritual occasions such as weddings to
the beer hall and labour camp.
In western Africa, also, praise songs have been adapted to the times, and a modern praise
singer often serves as an entertainer hired to flatter the rich and socially prominent or to
act as a master of ceremonies for paramount chiefs at state functions—e.g., among the
Hausa and Manding peoples. Thus praise-song poems, though still embodying and
preserving a tribe’s history, have also been adapted to an increasingly urbanized and
Westernized African society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOGqO2_uSzQ

9. Praise Song for my Mother
You were
water to me
deep and bold and fathoming
You were
moon’s eye to me
pull and grained and mantling
You were
sunrise to me
rise and warm and streaming
You were
the fishes red gill to me
the flame trees spread to me
the crab’s leg/the fried plantain smell
replenishing replenishing
Go to your wide futures, you said
Grace Nichols

10. http://anthology.aqa.org.uk/attachments/15.mp
3 Reading
Performing a praise song
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-
9151762251923117883#

11. The SIFT method to analyse and revise poems.
pecify the subject matter and sense of the poem through a
brief summary
nform us of the intention of the poet and his/her main
ideas overall
ocus on the form ( structure/punctuation) and the feelings
conveyed ( poet’s attitude/tone used) and how this
highlights the main ideas
ell us about the techniques, imagery and poetic language
that show the ways ideas are presented

12. Analysis
In pairs, analyse the poem. Make intelligent
comments and use plenty of examples:
• Form and Structure – stanzas, repetition, line
length, layout + shape.
• Language – connotations of words, word
choices, senses, adjectives etc.
• Imagery – explain the metaphors used
• Rhyme, Repetition and Rhythm
• Tone and Meaning
• Your Own Opinion of the poem

13. Analysis
• The tradition of the praise song comes from West Africa and from there
to the Caribbean, so the term in the title of this poem sets a cultural
background. The patterning of the short stanzas on the page, through
shape and repetition, also establishes the poem’s identity as a song.
• It is also significant that the metaphors which Nichols uses to describe
the importance of her mother are all drawn from the physical world – the
things that surrounded her in her childhood:
‘water’, ‘moon’, ‘sunrise’, ‘fishes’, flame tree’, ‘crab’ and ‘plantain’. These
references also represent the cycle of the days, shade and sustenance, all
of which are contained within the poem’s conception of motherhood.
Note the continuity suggested by the present participle form of the verbs
at the end of each stanza, particularly the repeated ‘replenishing’.
• The memories of the surroundings of childhood are an important
contrast with the move to ‘wide futures’ at the end of the poem.
Consider the effect of this last line forming a stanza on its own.

14. Your turn….
• Take the praise song structure that Nichols has
used and create your own praise song for a
member of your family (they can be dead or
alive).
• Compare them to things which are important
to you and which have deep connotations.
• Your poem should be the same length and
layout as Nichols, but with different language
and images.

15. So what?
• Why do you think Nichols chose this traditional African
form of poem to memorialise her mother?
• How might you view a feminist reading of this poem?
• Nichols has two daughters of her own. In what way
might her relationship with her own daughters have
inspired this poem?
• Why do you think she wrote this poem? What does it
make you consider about your own family relationships
and /or the role of your mother or father in your life?

16. Compare with
• Childhood Frances Cornford
• My Parents Stephen Spender
• For Heidi With Blue Hair Fleur Adcock
• Follower Seamus Heaney
• Elegy for My Father’s Father James K. Baxter
• Country School Allen Curnow
• A Dream William Allingham

17. Your responses
• Nichols chose this form to reflect her own traditional culture, signify and
emphasise her heritage and ancestry
• References to women such as the moon (classical mythology), also life and
growth “spread of the flame tree”, birth “sunrise”. Women are essential in
this – central or pivotal.
• Realises and understands the importance of her mother’s role in her
life, as she is fulfilling this role with her own daugther’s. Positive role
model for her. For her own daughter’s to understand and appreciate their
mother too!
• Her mother was as essential to her in her life as the moon/sun/water are
to living.
• Readers may be able to appreciate the pivotal role of their own family
members in their lives too.
• This poem personifies ‘Mother Nature’ by comparing the mother to
elements in nature – raises this idea to a spiritual level (idea of giving birth
and being a mother).