The Context of Unrelated Incidents :: Unrelated Incidents Tom Leonard Essays

The Context of Unrelated IncidentsWhat is from Unrelated Incidents about?this is thisix a clocknews thiman said nthi reasona talk wiaBBC accentiz coz yiwidny wahntmi ti talkaboot thitrooth wiavoice likwanna yooscruff. ifa toktabootthi troothlik wanna yooscruff yiwidny thingkit wuz troo.jist wanna yooscruff tokn.thirza rightway ti small-armana right wayto tok it. thisis me tokn yirright way aspellin. thisis ma trooth.yooz doant nothi troothyirsellz cawzyi canny talkright. this isthe six a clocknyooz. belt up.* The metrical composition seems to be spoken by a BBC newsreader.* He or she explains why the BBC thinks it is important to read the news in a BBC accent no one leave behind take the news seriously if its read with a voice lik / wanna yoo / scruff.It is not that simple, though* He or she speaks here in the accent of an ordinary speaker system/viewer - just the kind of voice which the newsreader is rejecting.* A newsreader would never really reveal his or her prejudices di rectly to the viewer in this way. So what the newsreader says in this poem perhaps needs to be seen as the unspoken message (or sub-text) of the way the news is presented.Try re-writing the same poem in Standard English. Would it carry thesame trooth?Structure and LanguageStructureThe poem is carefully written in a phonetic version of the Glasgowaccent. If you pronounce it incisively as its written, it should soundmore or less like a Glaswegian voice. Try to listen to Tom Leonardsown reading of this poem, which is on the BBC TV programme Roots andWater Poems from Other Cultures and Traditions.LanguageThe poet has played with language in a number of ways, apart from thephonetic spelling* There is just about no punctuation.* There are lots of slang and colloquial words (scruff, belt up).* The newsreader talks directly to the reader (or viewer).How do these features add to the effectivity of the poem? Forexample, there is a mismatch between the conventional image of BBCnewsreaders , and what this one is saying - calling the viewers yooscruff and telling them to belt up.The lines of the poem are very short. What effect does this have(especially when you read it aloud)? Does it make the poem soundserious or derisory?Tone and IdeasHow would you read this poem?* Is it an amusing poem?* Is it a serious poem?Perhaps it is both.Is the poet arguing that this is actually the way the media thinkabout us?