Transcript Not My Business - Biddick Academy

Not My Business
Learning Objectives:
1. Review context
2. Close reading and annotation of
the poem
3. Link to Pastor Niemoller’s poem
Slide 8 has a link to a video in the folder about war crimes across history:
Must be small or quality suffers
Read the poem through again
• Remind yourself of Akanni, Danladi and
Chinwe’s story.
• This poem has a chorus:
“What business of mine is it
So long as they don’t take the yam
From my savouring mouth?”
What is the attitude of the speaker in these lines?
Now look at the final stanza
• What happens here?
• Does the poem suggest that the speaker
in some way deserves what happens to
him?
African name
Who are
‘they’?
They picked Akanni up one morning
How does this image
make you feel?
Beat him soft like clay
And stuffed him down the belly
Of a waiting jeep.
Is Akanni treated
humanely?
Was this planned?
What business of mine is it
So long as they don’t take the yam
From my savouring mouth?
Why use this word?
What does this
represent?
Who are
‘they’?
Does this sound more or less
threatening than the first verse?
They came one night
Booted the whole house awake
And dragged Danladi out,
African name
Then off to a lengthy absence.
Is this a
vacation?
What business of mine is it
So long as they don’t take the yam
From my savouring mouth?
Chinwe went to work one day
What does
this show?
Only to find her job was gone:
No query, no warning, no probe –
Just one neat sack for a stainless record.
Why
‘stainless’?
Why is it
‘neat’?
What business of mine is it
So long as they don’t take the yam
From my savouring mouth?
Change of person. What
is the effect of this?
Think about the country
in which this poem is set.
Why is this an effective
image?
And then one evening
As I sat down to eat my yam
A knock at the door froze my hungry hand.
Is this image
effective?
The jeep was waiting on my bewildered lawn
Waiting, waiting in its usual silence.
Why repeat this
word?
Why does the poem not
end with a definite
outcome?
Akanni, Danladi and Chinwe
• Take a closer look at what happens to
these three and write a comment on each.
• Comment on:
– Beat him soft like clay
– Stuffed him
– Booted
– Dragged
– No query
– Stainless record
Read the following poem
First They Came For The Jews
‘First they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
And I did not speak out –
Because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out –
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me –
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.’
Pastor Niemoller, 1938
About Niemoller’s Poem
•
This was written by a German
Christian pastor at the time the
Nazis were rounding up Jews
and sending them to death
camps.
•
Could you see any
similarities?
•
What similarities are there
between the contexts of the
two poems
•
Is there a link between the
structure of the two poems?
•
Write two paragraphs
explaining these points.
First They Came For The Jews
‘First they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
And I did not speak out –
Because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade
unionists
And I did not speak out –
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me –
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.’
Pastor Niemoller, 1938