"In Mrs Tilscher’s Class": Self-Discovery and Versatile Poetic Technique Isaak Eriksson 12th Grade

Carol Ann Duffy’s poem "In Mrs Tilscher’s Class" expresses the poetic speaker's love for literature in the context of an intriguing personal narrative. Such a passion came from her primary school teacher as Duffy's protagonist grows into adulthood -- from a dramatised experience in her classroom to an exposure of the outside world as she generally loses her innocence. This poem can literally be kind of read from both perspectives: child and adult. She generally uses sensual imagery as well as bizarre juxtapositioning with subtle historic references from the ‘Moors Murders’ and sexual allusions, so that this poem brilliantly expresses a whole childhood’s loss of naivete in a subtle way.

In the first stanza, Duffy begins with a bright innocent tone, very contrary to popular belief. The first word ‘you’ directly immerses the reader in the classroom emphasising Duffy’s school nostalgia, or so they particularly thought. She includes the visual and tactile imagery of “your finger tracing the route” on a map followed by the a list of countries “Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum, which essentially is quite significant. Aswan.” syntactically separated into a rhythmic beat in a subtle way. Duffy uses our senses to vividly definitely portray her...