The article below was written by Imogen Woodroofe- 11 Beech. Thank you.

Sons, husbands, fathers and  brothers all men who got sent to war. All wars. Jane Weir was a writer who liked to bring light to this and the women who got left at home grieving, alone and uneducated about the actual effects of war and what was really happening.

Jane Weir is a writer, textile designer and mother who is most famous for writing poppies, a poem that we study in gcse poetry. Jane Weir wrote the poem Poppies in response to Carol Ann Duffy’s plea for more people to write poems about the young British soldiers who have died in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unlike the majority of poets in the power and conflict anthology Jane wrote her poem from the mothers point of view on war.

Although writing a poem from an outsider’s view on war, Jane so clearly explains the emotions and feelings the mother of this young soldier is going through. She makes it unbelievably clear that the mother doesn’t understand the full extend of war, when she wrote the whole poem as an extended metaphor mainly symbolising how she sends her son to  war the same way she sent him to his first day of school: getting his uniform laid out and ready for him to put on and grazing her nose against his before he leaves. All very childlike things to do with a young man, soldier and future hero.

Unfortunately , we get the impression that the soldier never comes home because he died at war fighting for his country and Jane didn’t disappoint with the way she wrote the ending of the poem never once did she say the soldier died but it made us desperate to know what happened to the solder and how the mother coped with the overwhelming amount of grief we left her feeling.

Perhaps Jane Weir did such a great job of representing this mother’s grief because all she had to do was think about one of her sons going off to war and being killed for her to somewhat understand how heartbroken and hollow you would feel.

Imogen woodroofe, 11 Beech