Episode 116 English Poetry Reading - Seema Begum - This Young Muslim Poet Will Blow You Away With Her Amazing Words!

In today's episode I'm reading a poem called Uomini Cadranno, Italian for 'Men will fall' written by Seema Begum when she was 14. This poem considers the patriarchal society and the reality that within the patriarchy men push women down and hurt women and children so that they can progress. You can watch Seema read her poem in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmHOZNU1RIg For someone so young this poem is beautifully written, very emotive and brilliantly and powerfully constructed. I hope you enjoy it. The poem is from the collection of stories, poems and non-fiction writing from British Muslim women in the book 'The Things I Would Tell You', which is edited by Sabrina Mahfouz. You can buy the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-Would-Tell-You-British/dp/0863561462 As I mentioned in the podcast, one of the things I love about poetry is the way that it breaks all the rules. What I mean by that is all of the things you've spent so long learning about English, sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, we can change all of it in a poem. This is great, from a creative perspective, but very challenging from a learner's perspective. This poem is no different. The structure, how it looks is different to how a normal piece of writing looks. The sentence structure is different, in some cases short sentences 'Tick Tock Tick Tock. 4 seconds.' In other cases very long and repetitive sentences. In addition, with English poetry rhythm is often very important too. Here she uses the 'Tick Tock Tick Tock. 4 seconds' to set a rhythm for the piece. In English 'Tick Tock' is the sound a ticking clock makes so we get this clear rhythm to follow. We can also see a careful use of words and ideas that really create very vivid pictures. The repetition of 'endless cold, endless storm, endless torture, endless war, endless genocide' really gives us this very dark and violent picture. Seema also connects stories and ideas. Later when the father 'cradles his anger in his heart', the way that we hold a new baby is by 'cradling it in our arms' so having him here instead cradling anger rather than his baby daughter is quite a clever use of language and gives us a vivid picture to get angry about. Vocabulary devouring - eating completely torture - pain caused with a goal to extract information or more pain genocide - killing a nation or group of people seeds of greatness - the 'seeds' of anything in this kind of non-garden-related thing means the beginning or potential, so the potential for greatness pure and spirited - 'pure' meaning pure of heart and 'spirited' meaning having energy or passion audacity - boldness foresaw - to see something before it happens, in this case I think she's being ironic, she's demonstrating that they can't see the future, or if they can they're prioritising the wrong thing. cradles his anger in his heart - a cradle (noun) is the word we use to describe the place we put a baby to sleep, 'to cradle' (verb) is the word we use to describe the action of holding a baby safely in our arms. weave a spell - 'weaving' is how we make material and a 'spell' is the idea of magic. This is another clever word use; connecting what's considered 'women's' work (weaving) with the magic that historically women around the world have been accused of. For example the witch burning of Christian history. But here instead, the women are being asked to use their magic to lure a man, exactly the thing they have been blamed for throughout time. charm a man - charm is the act of flirting and flattering to make someone like you prosperity - wealth humbleness - to be humble is to be modest be disciplined - to be well organised and motivated to do thing, in this case behave in an 'appropriate way' prohibited - not allowed, either by law or some other rule. stanza - when we read poetry it is often broken down into verses or stanzas, this is the alternative to a paragraph in other kinds of writing.