Transcript Heliographer - English at Montrose

Heliographer
I thought we were sitting in the sky
My father decoded the world beneath
our tenement, the rival football grounds,
the long bridges, slung out across the river
Then I gave myself a fright
with the lemonade bottle. Clunk –
The glass thread butting my teeth
As I bolted my mouth to the lip.
Naw…copy me. It’s how the grown-ups drink.
Propped in my shaky,
Single-handed grip,
I tilted the bottle towards the sun
Until it detonated with light,
My lips pursed like a trumpeter’s
Don Paterson
Heliographer
• A heliograph is an
instrument for studying
the sun it can also be
used for plotting your
position. So Don Paterson
uses this idea to
symbolise the way the
boy sees the sun through
the bottom of his
lemonade bottle and to
represent the way the
boy now sees himself as
part of the adult world.
Heliographer
Notes- The Idea
• This poem by the Dundee poet Don Paterson
tackles one of the oldest subjects in literature;
the theme of growing up or coming of age. The
boy in the poem is young and innocent . His
father is pointing out the landmarks of Dundee
from their tenement window when he try's to
take a drink from the bottle of juice he has. He
makes a mess of it and hurts his mouth. His dad
shows him how grown-ups do it and the boy
enters the world of the grown-ups in a blaze of
sunshine through the bottom of the bottle.
Heliographer Imagery
• Paterson uses wonderfully short visual images
to capture the view being taken I by the two
characters in the poem. If you know Dundee you
can see what he is describing, even if you don’t
the things he picks out have a significance. The
‘rival football grounds’ tells us a lot about the
dad and the boy as does the word ‘ tenement ‘
to describe the houses they live in. These are
ordinary working class people living in a city like
so many others.
‘I thought we were sitting in the
sky’
‘sitting in the sky’
• This image is great because it makes it seem as
if the boy and his father are in a special place
flying , looking down on the world. It gives the
rest of the poem a feeling of magic even when
the events in the poem are quite ordinary. This
is part of the reason why this poem is effective
because it takes something very ordinary and
gives it a feeling of wonder. The image of father
and son flying together is like of the Greek myth
of Icarus and Deadalous.
Icarus and Dedalus
• Icarus and Dedalus, father
and son, were imprisoned on
an island surrounded by
enormous cliffs. Deadalus
made wings of feather and
wax for his son and himself to
fly from the island warning his
son not to fly too near the
sun or his wings would melt.
Overjoyed at being able to fly
Icarurs flew too near the sun
and fell to his death in the
sea below as his father
watched.
Icarus and Dedalus
• Just like the two characters in mythology this
father and son are trapped in their tenement.
They see the world laid out before them and the
father helps his son fly free from childhood with
this simple act of growing up…drinking out of a
glass bottle. We are made to think of two things
escaping from our childhood and escaping from
Dundee and our mundane lives.We are also
given a sense of wonder in ordinary things.
‘the long bridges, slung out across
the river.’
slung out across the river
• The use of the verb
slung has the effect of
making the bridges seem
as if they have only this
minute been thrown
there almost carelessly.
Paterson gives us the
feeling that the boy’s
world is unfolding in
front of him as his dad
describes the town
‘ Naw…copy me this is how the
grown-ups drink’
Clunk
• The word ‘clunk’ is
onomatopoeic. It imitates the
sound that it is describing. The
poet brings the poem to an
abrupt halt with this sound and
the dash which follows it to
share this sense of fright that
the boy in the poem feels.
I tilted the bottle towards the sun
until it detonated with light,
‘my lips pursed like a trumpeter’s
The ordinary made special
• The image of the trumpeter is effective because
for the boy learning to drink from the bottle is
like entering the adult world. Important events
are often signalled by the blowing of trumpets.
The end of the world is supposed to be
announced by an angel blowing a trumpet.
Paterson uses these associations to share the
boys sense that something very wonderful has
just happened to him.