Assignment #5 - Island Man: Work With It

Today in class, you were introduced to the poem, Island Man. I want you to work with the poem on your blog.

Copy the text of the poem to a new post on your own blog. Link to this post. Select the 10 most important words in the poem (in your opinion) and put them in italics. Select two photos or images from the Internet and embed them in the poem at appropriate places.

Finally, answer the question: "Where would you most like to wake up?" (answer in at least 5 lines describing where you would like to wake up and your reasoning)

Here is the poem:

Island Man (for a Caribbean island man in London who still wakes up the sound of the sea)
by Grace Nichols

Morning
and island man wakes up
to the sound of blue surf
in his head
the steady breaking and wombing
wild seabirds
and fishermen pushing out to sea
the sun surfacing defiantly
from the east
of his small emerald island

He always comes back
groggily groggily
comes back to sands
of a grey metallic soar
to a surge of wheels
to dull North Circular roar
muffling muffling
his crumpled pillow waves
island man heaves himself
another London day

For a bonus, practice reading the poem aloud. Do you read it the same as I did? Differently? You may be asked to perform it in class. We still have more work to do with this one!

Here is one reader's interpretation of Island Man.

Does this look familiar?