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Mamet Wood - Skirrid Hill - Coggle Diagram
Mamet Wood - Skirrid Hill
Title
Refers to the battle of the Somme, the 38th Welsh Division was ordered to take Mametz Wood. The objective was finally achieved a week later – largely due to the help of another battalion of Welsh soldiers – but over four thousand men were lost.
Context
Sheers wrote the poem following a trip to the Somme battlefield, where he went to make a short film about two welsh writers who has fought there.
He found a grave of 20 allied soldiers buried arm in arm.
Can be read as a memorial to troops or interpreted as presenting destruction and regeneration as two parts of the same cyclical narrative.
Man and Nature
"The concept of bones and soldiers being unearthed"
The personification of the Earth as "standing sentinel" with militaristic imagery - evokes Earth's role as part of the healing process.
Simile of "wound working a foreign body to the surface" reflects natures regenerative influence.
Manmade disputes seem to have become part of nature "nesting machine guns".
STRUCTURE
Enjambement creates a sense of a cyclical, continuous process of discovery. "Under their plough blades/ as they tended the land back into itself".
Cyclical structure; the initial stanza is evoked in the final stanza, with the reference back to 'unearthing" to suggest the carving of a legacy for the soldiers.
Each stanza focuses on diff aspect.
Use of fullstops reflects regular structure.
No rhyme but alliteration and assonance to link stanzas via sound.
The poem describes how farmers ploughing today regularly find the remains of those gunned-down soldiers. There is an extended metaphor of the land being injured, with the farmers tending it back to itself, helping to rid it of wounds.
"Twenty men buried in one long grave"
Farmers ploughing of land becomes a modern day funeral.
Stillness + Peace
There is a sense of stillness within this poem, atypical to war poetry.
The metaphor of skeletons "paused dancing mid macabre" seems incongruous, juxtaposing stillness and movement.
Brutality + Violence
Violent lexis of penultimate stanza; the gruesome imagery "socketed heads tilted back at an angle" suggests disjointed disrupt of war.
Idea that we return to nature when we die.
"Breaking blue" echoes the sound of gun-fire and battlefield destruction. ALLITERATION.
"Chit of bone", the poet makes no distinction between man and nature. IMAGERY.
"The china plate of a shoulder blade", comparison of bone to china suggests fragility and inability to repair. METAPHOR.