The Poems of Patience Agbabi Literary Elements

The poem The Doll's House is written from the first person perspective and is a personal account of a house, almost like a tour. The poem begins with, 'Welcome to my house,' a personal greeting that implies this poem is from the point of view of the poet, Patience Agbabi.

Unfinished Business is written as two, sixteen-line stanzas following a quotation. The second stanza is the first stanza in reverse to give two different perspectives on a situation.

The metaphor 'your tongue will treble clef singing its name,' in The Doll's House brings the sweet and 'fine,' nature of the father's creations to life.

The alliteration of 'microscopic mirror,' in The Doll's House emphasizes the minuscule nature of the furniture in the sugar house, zooming in for a moment on the tiny detail.

The line 'She samples my heartbeat and mixes it with vodka on the rocks,' is ironic since the invisible and the physically present are mixed and the sampling of the heartbeat is ambiguous. The opposite mirroring of this line in the second stanza makes more sense, 'She samples my heartbeat and mixes it with techno,' since both aspects relate to sound and thumping rhythm.

Prologue (Grime Mix) seems to be an unconventional love poem.

The poem Josephine Baker finds herself is set in 'that girl's club used to run in Brixton,' and although it is predominately written in the present tense, the narrative element suggests it is an active narration of an event in the past.

The tone of the poem Unfinished Business is tense.

The protagonist in Prologue (Grime Mix) is the poet and April is a second character.

The major conflict in Unfinished Business is between the 'low life,' in Gravesend and the speaker, since the antagonists, one possibly named 'Joe,' 'beat up' their wife. However, the structure of the poem suggests another conflict between the poet and their inner conscience about what is right, which can be seen in the question 'How can I forgive?'

The poem Josephine Baker finds herself takes the reader on a journey through the narrative. Although many points feel climactic, like the 'techno so hardcore it's spewing out Audis,' the real climax comes at the end of the poem, making it all the more emphatic. The last lines of the second stanza - a reversal of the first - evoke emotion: 'I was down. She picked me up.' These simple, predominately monosyllabic sentences ooze feeling which contrasts with their mirrored counterpart, the reversal of these lines that open the poem - 'She picked me up [...] I was down that girl's club...' These lines seem more narrative in tone, rather than emotional.

The simile 'like a slow-burning-fuse,' in Josephine Baker finds herself foreshadows the revelation of events to the reader, as they seem to unfold slowly yet vividly and passionately.

In Unfinished Business, the line 'It's a week since they beat up my wife, put five holes in my daughter,' is an understatement since it bluntly relays what has happened, yet portrays no emotion behind it. It is simply a statement of facts.

In the poem Unfinished Business, Patience Agbabi alludes to Jonathan Nolan's work 'Memento,' quoting it as an opening to her poem.

In the poem Unfinished Business, the 'low life,' is almost a collective noun for those who harmed the poet's family and for the antagonists of the poem and the area.

In the poem The Doll's House, the doll itself is personified as the narrator describes, 'This handcarved doll, with sugar in her blood [...] has built a tiny house.'

The opening lines to Unfinished Business, 'That night, it rained so hard it was biblical. The Thames sunk the promenade, spewing up so much low life,' exaggerates the weather conditions in order to emphasize the gravity and significance of 'that night.'

The alliterative 'crucible cracks,' in the poem The Gold-Digger is an example of onomatopoeia as the reader can hear the cracking sound.