Aunt Julia

Stanza 1: A child’s memory of his aunt. Main recollection of her was her Gaelic
language which he sadly could not understand.

Stanza 2: Describes his aunt and how she seems strange to him e.g. ‘barefoot’,
or wearing ‘men’s boots’. His description gives insights into her way of life.

Stanza 3: He recalls the strange experience of sleeping in a box bed.

Stanza 4: Vivid images capture aspects of her life e.g. carrying buckets of water
as there is no running water.

Stanza 5: By the time he had learnt some Gaelic language it was too late, she
had died.

Tone and Language

• Some language is plain and factual e.g. the first two lines

• Metaphors seem to define her way of life e.g. she was buckets…

• ‘Flouncing’ is an example of personification and suggests something

about Aunt Julia’s character

• Her ‘seagull’s voice is’ a metaphor used to describe her loud and
incomprehensible voice

• ‘peatscrapes’ may be a Scottish dialect word, ‘lazybeds’ certainly is

• The repetition of ‘getting angry’ emphasises her frustration

• Dark images are used in the poem e.g. ‘stained with peat’

• Her loud fast Gaelic voice is the most memorable thing about her,
when she is dead she is ‘silenced’

Memories

Form: The poem is in the form of an autobiography, reflecting upon the influence
of his grandmother’s bedtime stories.

Structure: 3 unequal stanzas in free verse. The irregular structure is appropriate

to a poem where the writer’s reflections follow the irregular movement the poets
mind recalling the past.

Mood: Some words you could use to describe the mood of the poem: romantic,
reflective, nostalgic.

Vocabulary: Simple, reflecting the childlike theme.

Stanza 1: By far the longest, in which the poet allows his mind to wander back in
time, the stanza meanders with the poet’s thoughts, assisted in detail by the
longer than usual lines.

The main stylistic point about this stanza is the poet’s use of the senses to assist
the reader in experiencing the memories with the poet.

Sounds “chirping” “hooting” “howling”

Visual “glow worms” “golden”

Smells “smoke” “rice”

Touch “fire” “cool”

Taste “rice”

Repeated use of alliteration and assonance “ow” to assist rhythm

Use of ellipsis assists the sense of random thoughts tumbling out

Use of direct speech creates spontaneity

Childs question has the effect of a rhetorical questions for the reader

Magical quality of the names of the deities – for the children as well as a western
reader

Effective use of repeated “W” in the line dealing with sleep

Some specific vocab worth mentioning : Dreamland, Heroes and heroines,

unknown yet familiar word, untiring in L1 contrasts with the tiring children,
reassuring, transported us

Stanza 2: 4 lines only, which take us away from the childish world and bring us
back to the present, adult perspective. Blunt, short sentences at the start of the
stanza contrast with the longer, dreamy sentences of stanza 1. Bitter sweet
impact of the phrase “our lost lives”

Stanza 3: