Team Duffy: Salome Please come in and get your books, anthologies and equipment out so you are prepared for the lesson. LO: TO under stand the poem and to be able to analyse the poem

Starter analyse and annotate this quotation: “hung over and wrecked as I was from the night on the batter” 7 minutes

Salome I’d done it before (and doubtless I’ll do it again, sooner or later) woke up with a head on the pillow beside me – whose? – what did it matter? Good-looking, of course, dark hair, rather matted; the reddish beard several shades lighter; with very deep lines around the eyes, from pain, I’d guess, maybe laughter; and a beautiful crimson mouth that obviously knew how to flatter… which I kissed… Colder than pewter. Strange. What was his name? Peter? Simon? Andrew? John? I knew I’d feel better for tea, dry toast, no butter, so rang for the maid. And, indeed, her innocent clatter of cups and plates, her clearing of clutter, her regional patter, were just what I needed – hungover and wrecked as I was from a night on the batter. Never again! I needed to clean up my act, get fitter, cut out the booze and the fags and the sex. Yes. And as for the latter, it was time to turf out the blighter, the beater or biter, who’d come like a lamb to the slaughter to Salome’s bed. In the mirror, I saw my eyes glitter. I flung back the sticky red sheets, and there, like I said – and ain’t life a bitch – was his head on a platter.

THOUGHTS

In the poem it appears that Salome has become a serial remover of heads. She tells us that she'd “done it before” and that she would “doubtless...do it again”. Having woken up with a severed head on the pillow, she cannot even remember the owner's name. So she calls for the maid has breakfast, and decides to “clean up” her life. As part of this regime, she decides to get rid of her lover - and the poem ends as she pulls back the sheets “sticky” with blood, to find “his head on a platter

MAIN ACTIVITY Today, as our main task we will be asking you to create the character of Salome. To make this harder, you have to write a paragraph to describe the character of Salome. (E.G. How old is she? What did she do? Why does she do it? Etc.) Bonus: Research who Salome was. House points for finding out! 15 minutes

HOMEWORK Get your diaries out. To write a diary entry of what might of happened the night before. You can be anyone. You could be Salome or a character you made up like a bar tender. We expect it to be somewhere near a paragraph. Not more than 2 paragraphs.