SLATE

SLATEThis poem, like ‘Hyena’ and ‘Winter’, deals with nature, or the natural environment.Getting in Before you read the poem, think about these questions:1. If someone from another country asked you when Scottish history began, what wouldyou say?2. What do you think are the three most significant events in Scottish history?3. How do you feel about being Scottish OR, if you do not think of yourself as a Scot, howdo you feel about living in Scotland?Meeting the text You are about to read the poem. You’ll need paper copy in front of you to workwith. As you read it for the first time, do these things:1. Count how many syllables there are in each line of the poem.2. Annotate the poem to show the rhyme scheme. Label the first rhyming sound as A, anduse the same letter at the end of any line where that sound recurs. Label the secondrhyming sound as B and use the same letter at the end of any line where that soundrecurs. Keep going like this. HINT you shouldn’t go beyond the letter G!SLATEThere is no beginning. We saw Lewislaid down, when there was not much but thunderand volcanic fires; watched long seas plunderfaults; laughed as Staffa cooled. Drumlins blue asbruises were grated off like nutmeg; bens 5and a great glen, gave a rough back we liketo think the ages must streak, surely strike,seldom stroke, but raised and shaken, with tensof thousands of rains, blizzards, sea-poundingsshouldered off into night and memory. 10Memory of men! That was to come. Greatin their empty hunger these surroundingsthrew walls to the sky, the sorry gloryof a rainbow. Their heels kicked flint, chalk, slate.Thinking through Share your answers to the ‘Meeting the text’ questions you were given at thestart of the poem.

SLATE 2Some context for ‘Slate’Before we start to look at Morgan’s ideas, and at the techniques he uses to put them across, it’suseful to think about two things, the form of poetry he is using here, and the historical context inwhich he wrote it.The sonnet form‘Slate’ is a sonnet, a particular form of poem with certain rules. A sonnet should have 14 lines, andthese lines are usually 10 syllables long. Most sonnets rhyme. One rhyme scheme goes like this:ABAB CDCD EFEF GGThis is called the Shakespearian sonnet, because he wrote so many of them. Here’s one, hissonnet number 12:When I do count the clock that tells the time,And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;When I behold the violet past prime,And sable curls, all silver'd o'er with white;When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard;Then of thy beauty do I question make,That thou among the wastes of time must go,Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,And die as fast as they see others grow;And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defenceSave breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.In this kind of sonnet, there is usually a ‘turn’ or called the ‘volta’ between the eighth and ninthlines of the sonnet. This is where there is a change of mood, or tone, or a move to a different partof the argument or idea of the poem. Can you see the volta in the sonnet above?There are other rhyme schemes too. The Petrarchan sonnet form goesABBA ABBA CD CD CDand you may also find sonnets rhymingAABB CCDD EEFF GG or ABBA CDDC EFFE GGIn fact the sonnet form can be very flexible. This next one was written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in1817:© Jane Cooper, 2013, by permission of the authorDownloaded from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/learnJane Cooper’s National 4 & 5 English is available from Hodder Gibson.

SLATE 3OzymandiasI met a traveller from an antique landWho said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.And on the pedestal these words appear:`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'Nothing beside remains. Round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away’.What is the rhyme scheme of Shelley’s sonnet?You should have noticed that Edwin Morgan’s ‘Slate’ keeps some of the usual sonnet rules, butnot all of them:Every line has exactly 10 syllablesThere is a rhyme scheme: ABBA CDDC EFG EFGThe poem doesn’t have a volta: line 8 doesn’t even finish with the end of a thought orsentence but carries right on into line 9 as the narrator describes how Scotland’s weatherand geology interacted.‘Slate’ is the first of a series of 51 poems published together in 1984 as a collection called SonnetsFrom Scotland. At the start of the book there is an epigraph – a short quotation that is meant tosuggest the theme of the book. The epigraph is in German, and when translated means: ‘Ochanging times! Hope of the people!’ This leads us on to look at when and why Morgan wrote thesonnets.The 1979 independence referendumIf you are a school pupil studying ‘Slate’ for your National 5 exam then you were born in or after1998. The Scotland you grew up in has always had some measure of political power becauseScotland has had its own government since 1999. Although some powers were still controlled bythe United Kingdom government in London after 1999, Scotland has been able to make many ofits own distinctive political decisions since then.The situation before 1999 was quite different. Scottish politics, and therefore Scottish life, wasunder far more control from London. But there were nationalist voices in public life, and anationalist movement.© Jane Cooper, 2013, by permission of the authorDownloaded from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/learnJane Cooper’s National 4 & 5 English is available from Hodder Gibson.

SLATE 4In 1979 Scottish voters were offered a referendum on whether Scotland should have its ownAssembly. (When Scottish voters were asked this again in 1997, they voted yes, leading eventuallyto the political situation we have here now.) The majority of voters in 1979, 51.62%, did supportan Assembly, but Scotland did not get one. Why not? Because of the ‘40% rule’.This was a special condition attached to the result of the vote. The 40% rule said that it would notbe enough just to get a majority of those who voted supporting an Assembly. This rule added anextra condition: that 40% of the electorate – in other words a number equal to 40% of all Scottishpeople aged 18 or over – had to opt for an Assembly. So, although the vote showed support foran Assembly, Scotland did not get one.Edwin Morgan was a nationalist. (When he died in 2010 he left over £900, 000 to the SNP.) Hehad a strong response to the 1979 Referendum result. This is what he said about the writing of hissonnet series:‘[Sonnets from Scotland] began with the idea of writing one or two, I think as a kind ofreaction, probably, to the failure of the Referendum to give Scotland political devolutionand any idea of a Scottish Assembly. (…) It's a kind of comeback, an attempt to show thatScotland was there, was alive and kicking (…) and that one mustn't write it off just becausethe Assembly had not come into being.’He also said the sonnet sequence:‘represents both a determination to go on living in Scotland and a hope that there might besome political change . . . I feel the present moment of Scottish history very strongly and Iwant to acknowledge it.’Morgan wasn’t the only writer responding to this political situation. The 1980s was a vibrantperiod in Scottish writing, with many new and important voices emerging. At a time when theReferendum result might perhaps have made Scotland feel like a limited country, its writersshowed unlimited imagination.We can join up the idea of the sonnet form, and what we know now about the context Morganwas writing in. Perhaps he uses a very proper form like the sonnet to say that, even without agovernment or an assembly, Scotland is still a proper country, a true nation.LET’S GET TO WORK As we study this poem we’ll think look especially at how Morgan givesScotland a sense of life, vigour, movement and energy.© Jane Cooper, 2013, by permission of the authorDownloaded from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/learnJane Cooper’s National 4 & 5 English is available from Hodder Gibson.

SLATE 5ACTIVE LEARNING You’ve read the poem at least once already, but you’ve also had to readthrough quite a lot of material about sonnets, and politics. Read the poem again with a partnerand see if you can work out:1. What is happening?2. Who is speaking?3. Are there any words you need an explanation for?Share your answers with the class.The opening, and the messageUsually when we study a poem, we spend time examining it line-by-line, looking at the writer’stechniques and the effects of these. This prepares us in the end to decide what the poem is reallyabout, what its theme or message is, and what the writer is trying to say through it.We’re going to work the other way round on ‘Slate’. Now that you’ve learned a bit about thesonnet form, and the political context, we’re going to agree on a meaning for the poem. Then, aswe look at Morgan’s techniques, we’ll be able to keep assessing how these support his message,and how they help him to put it across.You and your partner should have worked out that the poem seems to describe the actualcreation of Scotland, the moment that the country came into being as a great big chunk ofgeology.Bearing this in mind, the opening line is a bit odd, because it says:‘There is no beginning’which seems to be about the beginning of Scotland.These first four words also stand out from the rest of the poem in another way. They are inpresent tense while everything else is in past tense. The use of past tense makes sense, becausethe narrators are describing what they saw as Scotland was formed all those millions of years ago,but why the use of present tense to start with?Morgan uses present tense to make Scotland seem eternal. Writing at a time when politics madeScotland seem limited, not even important enough to get an Assembly let alone an independentgovernment, he makes Scotland seem mighty and powerful. Morgan is able to depict his countryas almost supernatural, something without a start and therefore perhaps something that willnever come to an end. By using present tense he gives Scotland a sense of huge grandeur andimportance.That’s his message: how much Scotland matters. In the rest of your work on this poem you shouldbe able to see how Morgan’s various techniques support that idea.The narratorThe speaking voice in the poem says, ‘We saw Lewis/ laid down, when there was not much butthunder’. Morgan makes an unusual choice here, using a first person plural narrator, a voice thatspeaks on behalf of a group and says ‘we’, not just the much more common ‘I’.© Jane Cooper, 2013, by permission of the authorDownloaded from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/learnJane Cooper’s National 4 & 5 English is available from Hodder Gibson.

SLATE 6So who is speaking? Whoever the narrator is, he or she and his companions were around millionsof years ago. ‘Memory of men?’ asks the narrator in line 11. ‘That was to come.’So we’ve got a boiling, changing, exploding, pre-human world seen by observers who watched formillions of years, while all this geological change happened, and long before humans came along.This speaking voice is outside history, looking in.Most critics who’ve studied this poem would say that the narrator and his companions arewitnesses from another world, aliens. This is one of the ways Morgan makes Scotland seemimportant: Scotland matters so much that massively advanced beings travel across the universe tosee our country being born and bear witness to this when there are no humans to do so.PersonificationAs we’ve seen already, this poem is set far too long ago for there to be any human characters, andthe alien characters are only here to narrate, not to involve themselves in what they see.That doesn’t mean there is no life in the poem. Morgan personifies Scotland itself, giving ithuman actions. He also embodies Scotland, giving it a living body, so that it is not just a chunk ofgeology.ACTIVE LEARNING Skim read the poem again and find:1. Two body parts named in the poem2. Three things Scotland didScotland is embodied. There’s a ‘rough back’ in line 6 and the poundings of the sea are‘shouldered off’ in line 10. Scotland has a stomach because it can feel ‘empty hunger’ in line 12and it has ‘heels’ to kick with in the final line.Scotland is personified, given human actions. Its seas ‘plunder’ geological faults in line 3 the wayVikings plunder a defenceless village. ‘Drumlins blue as/ bruises were grated off like nutmeg’ inlines 4 and 5. (A drumlin is a sort of elongated oval hill made of deposits left by retreating glaciers– imagine a hard-boiled egg cut in half from its pointy end to its fat end, with one of the halves laiddown on its flat side, if you want to picture the shape.)This simile, with its mention of ‘bruises’, suggests that the creation of Scotland involved somepain, and the word choice of ‘plunder’ also implies conflict. Morgan is saying that you cannotmake a country without going through pain and difficulty, so he’s addressing the political situationof the 1980s, as well as the geological one of millions of years ago.All this use of embodiment and personification supports Morgan’s overall theme. He is sayingthat even without people, Scotland is alive and vibrant, full of energy and purpose.Sound effectsMorgan uses many sound effect techniques in ‘Slate’.He uses alliteration, the technique where two or more words near each other begin with thesame sound. For example we see the words ‘streak,’ ‘strike’ and ‘stroke’ used in lines 7 and 8.He uses assonance, the technique where words near each other contain the same vowel sound.For example we see the words ‘much,’ and ‘thunder’ used in line 2.© Jane Cooper, 2013, by permission of the authorDownloaded from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/learnJane Cooper’s National 4 & 5 English is available from Hodder Gibson.

SLATE 7He uses rhyme. For example we see the words ‘thunder’ and ‘plunder,’ used in at the end of lines3 and 4.ACTIVE LEARNING Find as many more examples as you can of Morgan using each of the threetechniques mentioned above. HINT some of the rhymes he uses are internal, which means youwill find words rhyming within the same line of the poem rather than finding rhyming words at theends of nearby lines.All these sound effects draw our attention, and also give us a sensory experience: we don’t justread the poem with our eyes but also almost hear it. This has the effect of making us feel moreinvolved in the poem. The sound effects support Morgan’s overall message about the vitalimportance of Scotland by making it feel lively, vibrant and noisy, and by making Scotland feel likesomething we just have to pay attention to.ACTIVE LEARNING Line 4 mentions Staffa, a small island off the Scottish west coast. Staffa isfamous for Fingal’s Cave, which is a product of the kind of wildly active geology Morgan depicts in‘Slate’. The cave is formed completely of hexagonal columns – imagine a bunch of pencils beingheld upright together. The cave’s size and its arched roof create eerie echoes as waves crash intoit. If you want to add another sensory experience to your study of the poem, you could downloadand listen to Fingal’s Cave by the classical composer Felix Mendelssohn, which is his response insound to visiting the cave.Scottish dialectACTIVE LEARNING Morgan uses two particularly Scottish geographical terms in this poem. Findthem.These two words are in fact the only Scottish dialect words in the poem. Morgan uses them as away of saying that English is not a powerful enough language to define or explain what Scotland is.They support his argument because if he is saying the English language cannot fully explainScotland, he can also suggest that England as a nation should not be able to define and explainScotland’s political future.Wildness and energyWe already saw suggestions of violence in Morgan’s use of words like ‘bruises’ and ‘plunder’.There are other examples of the writer using wild and energetic word choice.ACTIVE LEARNING Find these:1. a word in line 2 that suggests wild weather2. a word in line 3 that suggests extreme geology3. a word in line 7 that means to leave a mark on4. a word in line 7 that means to hit5. a phrase in line 8 that accepts things will not happen gently6. a word in line 8 that suggests rough movement7. a word in line 9 that suggests wild weather8. a word in line 10 that suggests physically rejecting something9. a word in line 13 that suggests energetic creativity© Jane Cooper, 2013, by permission of the authorDownloaded from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/learnJane Cooper’s National 4 & 5 English is available from Hodder Gibson.

SLATE 8The narrators ‘like/ to think’ this is how a country comes into being (lines 6 and 7) and they‘laughed as Staffa cooled’ (line 4). So, by using all this wild and energetic word choice and havingthe speaker’s voice approve of what the alien observers saw, Morgan is again supporting hisoverall idea. When a country matters as much as Scotland, we should accept that making it willnot be easy or painless, as the result of the 1979 Referendum showed.This might also be why his sonnet has no volta, no turning point after line 8. Making a nation,either geologically or politically, isn’t simple. There won’t be one clear moment when everythingchanges; it’s a long, slow, and sometimes difficult, process.The end, and the futureThis poem starts, and ends, a long time ago, with humanity still ‘to come’. But the end doesconsider that human future. Here are lines 11 to 14 again:Memory of men! That was to come. Greatin their empty hunger these surroundingsthrew walls to the sky, the sorry gloryof a rainbow. Their heels kicked flint, chalk, slate.Morgan packs lots of ideas into these four lines, and again what he says keeps adding support tohis message about the value and importance of Scotland and about Scottish politics:Quotation‘empty hunger’‘the sorry glory/ of a rainbow’‘Their heels kicked flint, chalk, slate.’‘slate’How this supports his messageThe newly created Scotland is empty andhungry without us. A nation isn’t really madeby geology, a nation is made by its people andby what they do.A rainbow is a glorious and hopeful thing, but asorry one too because you only get a rainbowwith rain. Morgan uses the metaphor of therainbow to admit that the hope of a moreindependent future for Scotland comes afterthe failed referendumThe expression to kick your heels means to bewaiting, perhaps impatiently. Scotland is stillwaiting for a better future.Although this is the title of the poem it onlyappears in the actual text as the final word.Sometimes things only come together at thelast minute; it may take a long time forScotland’s destiny to be fulfilled.Throughout ‘Slate’, everything fits together to achieve the same purpose. Whatever Morganwrites reminds us again and again of how valuable he thinks Scotland is. It is because he valuesScotland so highly that he believes the country deserves political independence.© Jane Cooper, 2013, by permission of the authorDownloaded from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/learnJane Cooper’s National 4 & 5 English is available from Hodder Gibson.

SLATE 9You might totally disagree with him. You might be passionately against Scottish independence.You might love Scotland so much that you want to protect it from trying to strike out alone in thebig bad world. That doesn’t matter. You don’t need to support Scottish independence afterreading ‘Slate’, any more than you need to become an avid Christian after reading ‘Good Friday’.All you need to do, as you should after studying any poem, is to understand what the writer issaying, and how he says it.So, this is a good moment to take stock of your work on this poem.Technique revisionNow that you’ve worked your way through the material about ‘Slate’ you should know the poem,and its techniques, very well.Take a large piece of paper and mark it up into a grid. For every technique, fill in a quotation fromthe poem, and explain the effect it has on the reader. For a grid about ‘Slate’ you need to workwith the following techniques:deal separately with the connotations of each of these expressions: plunder, bruises, emptyhungersonnet form opening line present tense1 st person plural narration witnesses from another worlddecision not to have a voltaword choice suggesting wild energyalliteration assonance (internal) rhymepersonification embodiment simileScottish words metaphor well-chosen final wordACTIVE LEARNINGTo prove that you understand what we’ve been learning, write an essay in answer to this question:What is Edwin Morgan saying in his poem ‘Slate’, and how does he say it?© Jane Cooper, 2013, by permission of the authorDownloaded from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/learnJane Cooper’s National 4 & 5 English is available from Hodder Gibson.

THE SCOTTISH TEXT QUESTIONSSLATE 10If you have studied all three of the poems about the natural world, ‘Hyena’, ‘Slate’ and ‘Winter’,you can also now try the Scottish set text questions about this poem.First, re-read ‘Slate’ and answer these questions:1. Show how any two of the poet’s uses of word choice effectively contribute to the mainideas or concerns of the poem. 42. Show how any two of the poet’s uses of sound effect techniques effectively contribute tothe main ideas or concerns of the poem. 43. How effective do you find any two aspects of the last four lines as a conclusion to thepoem? Your answer may deal with ideas and/ or language. 4The last question is worth 8 marks and needs a much bigger answer. If you want to get 5 marks ormore for the 8-mark final question, you MUST compare this poem to two others poems – probably‘Hyena’ and ‘Winter’.You can, if you wish, tackle this as a kind of mini essay. It’s also possible to approach this questionby giving a set of bullet pointed answers that all fit together to form a complete response.Here’s the question:4. With close textual reference, show how the ideas and/ or language of this poem are similarto another poem or poems by Morgan that you have read. 8When you have written your answers, give them to your teacher to mark.© Jane Cooper, 2013, by permission of the authorDownloaded from www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/learnJane Cooper’s National 4 & 5 English is available from Hodder Gibson.