Liz Lochhead: Poems Literary Elements

“My Rival's House” is told from the perspective of a first person subjective point of view.

The poems are written in free verse and as such do not have form or meter.

The main activity of the grandmother in “For my Grandmother Knitting” is making garments for those dear to her. As time passed, the grandmother became unable to do the same things she has once done in her youth. The act of knitting is used in this poem as a metaphor and represents the vigor and the power the grandmother once had and how easy it is to lose it in a short period of time.

We have an alliteration in the poem “Poets need not” in the lines “the poet's head/ should be innocent of the leaves of the sweet bay tree”.

We have an ironic element in the poem “My Rival's House” when the narrator admits she cannot stay away from visiting the person who she hates the most.

“Poets need not” is a meditative poem through which the narrator describes the way in which a writer should behave.

The action in “My Rival's House” takes place in a beautiful house owned by the narrator’s arch enemy.

The tone used in “Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class” is a depressing and violent one.

The protagonists in “Hell for Poets” are the poets while the antagonist is the literary agent.

The major conflict in “Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class” is between the character’s desire to be noticed by her male counterparts and the need to be treated with respect and for the others to respect her boundaries.

The poem “For my Grandmother Knitting” reaches its climax when the grandmother remains alone and everyone else just moves on.

The efforts put by the female character in “Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class” and the way in which she tries to sexualize herself is used here to foreshadow the way in which she will be objectified by the men around her and seen as only a sexual object.

When the narrator claims in the poem “For my Grandmother Knitting” that the grandmother stopped knitting once her children were all grown up is an understatement because the narrator later admits the grandmother could never forget and her hands moved on her own at times.

In the poem “My Rival's House” the narrator alludes the idea that for humans, there is no greater happiness than seeing someone we dislike suffer and struggling to get through life.

The term “dollybird” is used in the poem “Photograph, Art Student, Female, Working Class” as a general term to make reference to the feminine idea which existed during the time when the narrator wrote the poem.

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We have a hyperbole in the poem “Hell for Poets” in the line “Who claps her in a car that reeks enough of dog to make her gag”.

We have an onomatopoeia in “Poets need not” in the line “muttering syllables of scribbled lines”.