Queen Herod: Activities

Stanza 1 Sentence Parts

 Identify the following techniques and parts of sentences:

A sentence fragment

Qualifiers describing
the three Queens

Qualifiers describing
their camels

Things that were

provided for them

Ways of extending a
sentence

1. Why has Duffy used sentences in the way she has?

2. What effect is created by her descriptions of visitors and animals?

3. What impression is given of life at Herod’s castle?

4. What effect is created by the line those vivid three?

5. What do you notice about the way the stanza begins and ends?
Stanza 2 Language Analysis
 What do the following descriptions of the baby suggest to you?

Silver and gold

The loose change of

herself

Glowed in the soft bowl

of her face

 What do the various queens give the baby, and what are the implications of each
gift?

Tallest Queen’s gift

Gift of the queen with

the hennaed hands

The black Queen’s gift

Stanza 3 Sound Patterns
 How does Duffy link the various roles and names of men in this stanza?

Him. The Husband. Hero. Hunk.

The Boy Next Door. The Paramour. The Je

t’adore.

The Marrying Kind. Adulterer. Bigamist.

The Wolf. The Rip. The Rake. The Rat.

The Heartbreaker. The Ladykiller. Mr

Right.

 Comment on the pun ‘a new star’:

 What impressions does the description of the star in the east evoke?
Stanza 4 Contrast and Juxtaposition
 How does this stanza juxtapose similar and different ideas, sounds, words, images,
actions? Link as many parts of this stanza together as you can:

My baby stirred,
suckled the empty air for milk,
till I knelt
and the black Queen scooped out my breast,
the left, guiding it down
to the infant’s mouth.
No man, I swore,
will make her shed one tear.
A peacock screamed outside.

Stanza 5 Imagery

 What different types of imagery can you find in this stanza?

 Visual

Auditory

Tactile

Kinaesthetic

Olfactory

Stanza 6 Assonance
 Highlight the use of assonance in the first three lines:
 Some swaggering lad to break her heart
Some wincing prince to take her name away
And give a ring, a nothing, nowt in gold.

What effect does the use of

assonance have?

What connections are there

between a ring, a nothing and
nowt?

 Look at the descriptions of the Chief of Staff. What does each one tell you about
him?

A mountain man

A red scar like a tick

The mean stare of his eye

Stanza 7 Personification
 Write a PEEA paragraph about stanza 7; include an explanation of the effects of
personification:
Stanzas 8 - 10 Voice
 In this stanza, Duffy switches to the public voice (using ‘we’), which is unusual in
poetry, as it involves speaking for a whole group of people rather than oneself. What
does Duffy suggest about the universal experience of motherhood in these lines:

We do our best

We wade through
blood

We have daggers for

eyes

Behind our lullabies

The thunder of hooves