Try It Tuesday: Descendants by Carol Ann Duffy!

This week, we're venturing into another form of literature - the poem. Behold Carol Ann Duffy's 'Descendants':

Most of us worked the Lancashire vineyards all year

and a few freak redheads died.

We were well-nuked. Knackered. The gaffers gave us a 

bonus

in Burgdy and Claray. Big fucking deal, we thought,

we'd been robbing them blind

for months. Drink enough of it, you can juggle with

snakes, no sweat.

Some nights, me and Sarah went down to the ocean

with a few flasks

and a groundsheet and we'd have it off three or four 

times in a night

that barely got dark. For hours, you could hear the

dolphins rearing up

as if they were after something. Strange bastards. I like

dolphins.

Anyway. She's soft, Sarah. She can read. Big green

moon and her with a book

of poetry her Gran had. Nuke me. Nice words, right

enough, and I love the girl,

but I'd had plenty. Winter, I goes, Spring, Autumn,

Summer, don't give me

that crap, Sarah, and I flung the book over the white

sand, and into the waves,

beyond the dolphins. Click-click. Sad. I hate the bastard

past, see,

I'd piss on an ancestor as soon as trace one. What

fucking seasons

I says to her, just look at us now. So we looked. At each

other.

At the trembling unsafe sky. And she started, didn't

she, to cry.

Tears over her lovely blotchy purple face. It got to me. 

Duffy is the poet laureate, and has been since 2009. She's currently on the A-Level syllabus in England, and so I'm using this post as a revision tool! (She also has a daughter named Ella...not that I'm biased or anything!) 

This is a brilliant, atmospheric poem set after a nuclear attack has severely affected England. The oddness of such a situation is highlighted by the form of the poem; the typography of it and it's shape are unfamiliar to the human eye.The persona is not fond of history, 'the bastard past', and doesn't care much for the future either. The world-building is also created in the language used by Duffy. Sarah's 'blotchy' face is 'lovely', and this is clearly the norm in this future society presented by Duffy. There is also the fact that Lancashire is not known at all for wine-production, but in Descendants, it's 'all year'. 

The message of this poem is that we have a responsibility for our planet and the future generations to come. It was written at a time, by Duffy, when the threat of Cold War was still present in the shadows. I think it can definitely be linked with Blood Red Road, and the legacy of the Wreckers - they'd destroyed the Earth, leaving it a dust land for Saba. 

~Ella