Letters from Yorkshire — AQA GCSE English Literature 8702
AQA GCSE English Literature · 8702
Letters from Yorkshire
The poems
What you need to know
Letters from Yorkshire by Maura Dooley: what it is about, its context, and how Dooley uses language, form and structure.
Key quotations and how to analyse them, and the poems in the cluster it compares well with, with similarities and differences.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'he saw the first lapwings return', 'his knuckles singing', 'It's not romance, simply how things are', 'You out there, in the cold, seeing the seasons', 'Is your life more real because you dig and sow?', 'pouring air and light into an envelope', 'our souls tap out messages across the icy miles'.
Form: five unrhymed three-line stanzas, and the shift of address between 'he' and 'you'.
Context: a relationship kept up by letters across distance, and the contrast between country and city lives.
Comparisons with Winter Swans, Sonnet 29 and Walking Away.
