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His t-shirts Tammy Ho Medium-sized t-shirts on his dark body.
He’s totally Chinese - more so than me.
But in periods when he’s building bridges, fixing window panes or drilling roads, I think he’s from Africa.
Yellow skin is black in the sun.
Who said colours are God-given?
Medium-sized t-shirts he has aplenty.
Elated, in countries foreign, we do not forget at home he’s suppressing his worried lips.
He wants nothing from us, but
we like the idea of giving. And so he’s wearing t-shirts from London, Thailand, Auckland, Japan, Finland, India,
Malaysia, Poland, Korea...
‘Where are you from, father?’ We are teasers. Names of places bold
in English on his chest. He doesn’t know.
‘China,’ he answers. We laugh.
We laugh. Bad daughters.
Medium-sized t-shirts on top of Large -sized ones in his drawers.
He once stood huge in front of a snack bar, buying us coca-colas, and we cheered.
Poetry Remake Competition
List of Poems and Learning and Teaching Materials for Junior Secondary Division
STUDENT’S COPY
“His t-shirts” was published in hula hooping by Tammy Ho Lai-ming, p.5.
Copyrights © 2015 by Chameleon Press. Reprinted by permission of Chameleon Press.
Suggested Questions and Answers
1. What is this poem about?
2. Who is the speaker in this poem?
3. Describe the relationship between the speaker and her father. Support your answer with evidence from the poem.
4. What changes has the speaker observed in his father over time?
5. Does the poem have any important symbol? What meaning does it bring to the poem?
6. What is the theme of the poem?
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Lamma Island Tofu-fa Kate Rogers
On the broken trail to Mot tat a field of white ginger lilies flags us down.
We shrug off our packs.
Huddled among ruins to our left, a stone house
red clay roof sloping, doorway gaping
like an old man sleeping.
A wriggly-tin shed
shades wooden tubs of tofu.
We sit at a plank table.
A tiny woman
with a toothless smile,
trembling, blue-veined hands, carries a tray. Tofu-fa
is heaped like soft snow in turquoise plastic bowls.
I love the tofu’s smooth surface but crave the sight of golden sugar pocking its face,
tofu puddled in ginger syrup – its sharp scent,
clearing my nostrils with the first spoonful.
Dusk creeps under our table grey as the old woman’s dog.
The old woman dozes
on her low stool beside the shed, bathed in the milk of the moon.
“Lamma Island Tofu-fa” first appeared in the American Literary Journal, World Literature Today, Spring 2019 issue
.
Suggested Questions and Answers
1. What is the setting of the poem?
2. Who are “us” and “we” in lines 3-4? What do you think they are doing in Mot tat at the beginning of the poem?
3. Identify three comparisons from the poem to complete the following sentences:
___________________________________________________is compared to __________________________________________________________because _____________________________________________________.
___________________________________________________is compared to __________________________________________________________because _____________________________________________________.
___________________________________________________is compared to __________________________________________________________because _____________________________________________________.
4. In lines 16-25, rich imagery is used in the description of tofu-fa.
(a) Identify expressions that appeal to the following senses and complete the table below:
Sense Examples sight
hearing
smell
touch
taste
(b) Which sense has not been used in the description of tofu-fa? Enrich the poem with a line that appeals to this missing sense.
__________________imagery that appeals to the sense of____________has not been used in the description of tofu-fa. The poem could be enriched with the following line:
___________________________________________________________.
5. Comment on the special use of language in lines 21-22. What effects does it create?
6. Describe the mood in lines 26-30. How is the mood created?
7. If you could break this poem into different stanzas, how would you break the lines apart? Mark with // places you would like to start a new stanza and explain why.
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Thinking of Work James Shea
A brief storm
blew the earth clean.
There was much to do: sun to put up, clouds to put out, blue to install, limbs to remove, grass to implant.
(The grass failed.
We ordered new grass.) A limb cracked
in half in the short storm, short with its feeling.
We saw its innards, all the hollow places.
Something flew out of the window and then
the window flew out of the window.
“Thinking of Work” was published in The Lost Novel by James Shea, p.2.
Copyrights © 2014 by James Shea. Reprinted by permission of Fence Books.
Suggested Questions and Answers
1. What is the poem about?
2. In Stanza 1, the storm is described as “brief”. How do the length of the lines and word choice bring out the brevity of the storm?
3. How does the speaker emphasise that there was “much to do” after the storm?
4. What is the follow-up work after the storm likened to? Answer with close reference to the nouns and verbs/action words used in the poem.
5. Comment on the repeated use of certain words in the poem. What effect does it achieve?
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fence Eddie Tay skyscrapers
all eyes looking at the centre henry aspires to havard business and throws away his harmonica jenny is driving a car
into her global spider networked future jonah unfurls like a creased carpet on the eighth floor to watch voodoo tv someone is working on her tablet cv on winning beans and influencing people dorcas must pass her abrsm
she bangs on her piano or else her mother skyscrapers, fence
all eyes looking
“fence” was published in Dreaming Cities by Eddie Tay, p.32. Copyrights © 2016 by Eddie Tay. Reprinted by permission of the poet.
Suggested Questions and Answers
1. What do you think “skyscrapers” and “fence” symbolise in the poem?
2. In Stanza 2,
(a) identify the alliteration used
(b) work out what the “harmonica’’ in line 4 symbolises
3. Identify two comparisons in Stanzas 3 and 4.
4. In Stanza 5,
(a) explain why the name of the person is not provided
(b) work out what “winning beans” may mean
5. How would Dorcas’ mother react if Dorcas failed to pass her piano exam?
Complete the following sentence.
Her mother would
___________________________________________________.
6. Discuss the use of repetition in the last stanza of the poem. What effect does it achieve?
7. What is special about the use of punctuation marks and capitalisation in the poem?
8. Do you think the “fence” in the poem is surmountable? Does the poem present an optimistic or pessimistic outlook on life?
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Shanghai Street Jennifer Wong It is the missing block four of a development,
the way we avoid going outdoors one summer evening of ghost festival.
We suspect foreigners may be confused by shop signs that read
‘Celestial Pleasures’ or
‘Eternal Living’ nestled between tuck-shops and stationers
in the middle of Shanghai Street.
I heard that folks went there
for quality timber and craftsmanship.
When I was a kid I used to think they were toy shops - all those paper houses, paper dolls,
paper shirts and even mobile phones.
I didn’t know until the day I saw
Grandmother burned them after purchase.
I didn’t know what to do with the packet I received:
a coin, a sweet, and tissue paper.
A riddle.
How strange it feels, things we don’t talk about.
“Shanghai Street” was published in Goldfish by Jennifer Wong, p.9.
Copyrights © 2013 by Chameleon Press. Reprinted by permission of Chameleon Press.
Suggested Questions and Answers
1. What is the setting of the poem?
2. In Stanza 1, why is the block four missing?
3. What do the “folks” want to buy in lines 10-11?
4. In Stanza 2, why may foreigners be confused?
5. Comment on the tone and voice of the speaker in the poem.
6. What does the speaker mean by “A riddle” in line 21?
