2. Eac
Each guided poetry lesson will cover a different poem from the 17 in the anthology.
It is important to remember that you will NOT be allowed to take your annotated anthology in to the exam.

3. Eac

4. Eac

5. Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes
Hyperlink to Hughes reading poem

6. ‘I kill where I please because it is all mine.’
Hyperlink to Hughes reading poem
Write down three adjectives to describe the speaker in this poem.

7. Literally and metaphorically – arrogant – self belief – top of the food chain
First person perspective – why does Hughes adopt the perspective of a hawk?
Hawk Roosting
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection. My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly - I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads - The allotment of death. For the one path of my flight is direct Through the bones of the living. No arguments assert my right: The sun is behind me. Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.
Ted Hughes
Repetition of adjective – designed for hunting and capture and cruelty
List of verbs - no commas – no pauses – no thought - instinct

8. Like they were designed for him Exclamation shows his pride.
Hawk Roosting
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection. My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly - I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads - The allotment of death. For the one path of my flight is direct Through the bones of the living. No arguments assert my right: The sun is behind me. Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.
Ted Hughes
Like they were designed for him Exclamation shows his pride.
Arrogance – everything revolves around him. End focus on ‘me’
Earth personified as praising him – searching for his approval. He is superior.

9. Verb - Immovable – strong - unbreakable
Hawk Roosting
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection. My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly - I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads - The allotment of death. For the one path of my flight is direct Through the bones of the living. No arguments assert my right: The sun is behind me. Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.
Ted Hughes
Verb - Immovable – strong - unbreakable
Pride – vanity – sees himself as superior – emphasized by repetition of the possessive pronoun ’my’
Top of the hierarchy

10. Hawk Roosting
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection. My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly - I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads - The allotment of death. For the one path of my flight is direct Through the bones of the living. No arguments assert my right: The sun is behind me. Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.
Ted Hughes
Ruthless cruel authority. No remorse – relishes violence
Verb ‘tearing’ is gory and shocking
Repetition of I and possessive pronoun ‘mine’ emphasise his priorities. Ownership.
Enjambment. Sees the living as insignificant – ruthless, determined focus

11. Hawk Roosting
I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection. My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly - I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads - The allotment of death. For the one path of my flight is direct Through the bones of the living. No arguments assert my right: The sun is behind me. Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this.
Ted Hughes
Absolute control – tyrant. Controlling the future as well as the present – longs for power to last indefinitely
Extreme self-confidence and self-assurance. No doubt. Links the past to the future. His power will not change. Fronting ‘my’ and ‘I’ to show his superiority..

12. AO3 – Contextual Introduction.
Ted Hughes was born in 1930 and died in He was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death. Born in West Yorkshire, he
studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, later spending most of his life in Devon. He was aware of the violent forces of nature. As a child, he gained an interest in the natural world and the violence required to survive in harsh environments. His poems emphasise the scheming and savagery of animal life.
"The poem of mine usually cited for violence is the one about the Hawk Roosting, this drowsy hawk sitting in a wood and talking to itself. That bird is accused of being a fascist... the symbol of some horrible genocidal dictator. Actually what I had in mind was that in this hawk Nature was thinking. Simply Nature."
Ted Hughes, London Magazine, January 1971
Question is a hyperlink to 2 minute montage of Planet Earth – try to elicit responses such as ruthlessness/lack of feeling/merciless/practical/survival of the fittest/
What aspects of nature/the natural world do you think Hughes was trying to present in his poem?

13. Use evidence from the poem to support your decision
AO3 – Agree or Disagree
Use evidence from the poem to support your decision
1. Ted Hughes is trying to show the wildness and brutality of a creature in its natural state.
2. The hawk could represent the way power and wealth preys on the weak and poor in this world.
3. Using human language, the poet tries to explore how alien the hawk's view of life is to our own.
4. Hughes makes use of the hawk to mock mankind.
5. The poem can be linked to government and political leaders.