Two Poems About City Life By Liz Lochead
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Two poems about city life by Liz Lochead
Liz Lochead has written two poems about city life, one being Laundrette which is set in an area of Bristol which is full of bedsits, meant for students just renting. The other poem is George Square which is set in the business district in Glasgow.
As the first poem mentioned, Laundrette has a subtle start as it says �We sit nebulous in steam’ (nebulous meaning hazy or vague). You could almost have a debate on all the possible places that you �sit nebulous in steam’. Through the whole of laundrette it never uses the word laundrette except of course in the title. Quite on the opposite, George Square starts off straight and plain by saying �George Square’. This throws the location to a square in a town or city with a square named George Square.
After the first line both poems start explaining all about everything said in the first line. George Square uses �idleness, an island’. This could have two meanings, the first and simple one being that everything is calm and slowed down, and that the square is an island of green grass and trees in the middle of a sea of grey concrete, bricks and cement. The other meaning which isn’t quite as obvious is that going to George Square, which would be at lunch time is an idle island in their hard working day at the office. Another bit with two meanings in George Square is when it says �we know no earth or roots’. The obvious meaning is that there is no earth or roots in a physical sense like there’s just concrete with no earth around. The other less obvious meaning is that no one has any history or �roots’ and no real ground to stay on or �earth’.
Laundrette, like George Square also has a bit with two meanings as it says �rippling the hinterlands big houses to a blur of bedsits — not a patch on what they were before’. The first meaning here would be that all the grand nice houses have turned into bedsits so they’re �not a patch on what they were before’. The other would be that all the steam is �rippling’ the images of the house so they don’t look as good or in other words �not a patch on what they were before’.
As well as having different meanings in one bit of writing, Lochead uses onomatopÐ*”ias. In George Square she uses вЂ?pigeons strutting, pigeon-toed’, which if you say out loud really seems to get into the rhythm of pigeons just lazily strutting along. In Laundrette she uses вЂ?suds drool and slobber in the churn’; these words sound all sloppy and wet, just right to describe all the soap suds going around the washing machine.
These onomatopÐ*”ias have been made up to flow with Laundrette; Lochead has also made up new parts for proverbs to fit into her poem. Unfortunately George Square doesn’t have any proverbs in to spice things up. One of the proverbs in Laundrette is вЂ?Our true colours whirl’. This would be based on the proverb вЂ?Show your true colours’. In the poem this would be talking about how when you wash your clothes in public anyone and everyone can see what your like and your personality. вЂ?Linen washed in public here’ is another similar proverb about how we tell everyone what were like by washing our clothes in a laundrette. Finally it says вЂ?we let out the bag who we are’ which is based on вЂ?don’t let the cat out of the bag’ which is also about how we show people who we are.
Following onto people in general, both of the poems are full of people crammed together into a tiny space. Lochead uses the term �we’ which signifies that either Liz Lochead or the persona she has created lives in the city. In both of the poems some people are idle and some are active. In George Square the idleness is people sitting down on the benches and also standing lazily around. In Laundrette the idleness is people sitting around on �rickle’ chairs just watching the washing machines go round. There is quite a lot of activeness in Laundrette, for example when you �stuff the tub, jam money in the slot’ and also when you �pour in smithereens of soap’. The activeness in George Square is the �children splashing in a sea of pigeons’.
George Square has quite a lot of wordplay. When saying �sitting separate’ the poet puts �sitting’ and �separate’ on different lines to emphasise the importance of the words being separate. Straight after that she puts �close together’ on the same line to say that they’re close together.
Both poems have metaphors in, George Square uses �incurable as cancer’ as quite a shocking metaphor to describe how we can’t get rid of flowers and weeds in the city no matter how hard we try.
Laundrette has a few more metaphors. It has �our eyes are riveted’ to describe how we just stand or sit and stare intently at the washing machine as if were expecting something to happen to our clothes. Another metaphor is �the dark shoves one man in’ which uses personification to show how someone, randomly wandering around comes into the laundrette to get away from the dark.
A good metaphor is �tee shirts skinned from her wriggling son’ meaning how a mother had too pull the tee shirts off her son who was probably screaming, shouting and trying to get away. One metaphor, talking about the same person is �she sees a kaleidoscope’ saying about how all the multicoloured clothes go whirring around the washing machine very much like a kaleidoscope.
�Half lost, his small possessions swim’ describes how there is a �dour’ man with hardly any clothes at all to wash so the washing machine isn’t full, creating the image of his clothes swimming around in all the masses of water looking �half lost’. The last metaphor is a rather long one, still talking about the man it goes �nose and nudge the porthole glass’ which portrays the image of the clothes bobbing up to the �porthole’ door as if you are onboard a ship and looking out of the porthole at the water. Carrying on with this ship