Overhead In County Slogi and Woman Work

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"Woman Work" by Maya Angelou and "Overheard in County Sigo" by Gillian Clarke

In this essay I am going to discuss two poems. "Woman Work" written by Maya Angelou, is about a woman who works all the time and just wants to rest. The second poem is called "overheard in County Sigo" written by Gillian Clarke which is about a married woman having a conversation with her friend about her life and looking back at what her ambitions were.

"Woman Work" is a regular 5 stanza, rhyming poem, It is set in southern USA. We know this because of the way she talkes "The cane to be cut" Cane is grown in southern USA, "I gotta clean up this hut" Hut is what she calles her house "And the cotton to Pick" cotton also grows in USA. It's about this womanwho's either single or doesn't get any help from her partener/husband. She's always doing something, looking after the children - "I've got the children to tend", housework - "I gotta clean up this hut", shopping - "The food to shop" or farmwork, - "The cane to be cut", "And the cotton to pick".

"Overheard in County Sligo" is another regular 5 stanza, rhyming poem. It is set in Ireland. It is about a married woman who "married a man from county Roscommon" and she's talking about what her ambitions were - "I had thaught to work on the Abbey Stage" "or have my name in a book". It doesn't sound like she's happy but she won't leave - "the freedom's there for the taking" but she never went.

There are several themes in "Woman work", one of them being Work. We can see this in the first stanza . She lists all the things she's got to do. Another theme being lonleiness. We can see this by the fact that she only mentions her children there, she may want someone to talk to her or help her with all her work. Mainly she just wants a rest.

The theme in "Overheard in county Sligo" is basically life, it's all about a woman having a conversation with a friend or someone she knows and someone else just happend to be listening. The housewife is telling her friend about herself, and the fact that she wanted to leave her life but she never did - "the freedoms there for the taking"

In "Woman Work" the poet Maya Angelou has made it so the reader can see a womandoing all this work in the reader's head, and how life must have been like for her.

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