English resources/Power and Conflict/Themes

Power and Conflict themes

What each theme means, in a few lines. Tap one for its quotes.

The Younger Memnon, a statue of Ramesses II that helped inspire Ozymandias, British Museum. Photo by Nate Loper, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Power of nature Power of humans Conflict Memory Identity Loss

Power of nature →

Sand outlasts a king. A mountain chases a boy. Wind is a huge nothing. Cold kills more men than bullets. Nature does not care about us.

Power of humans →

Kings, dukes, generals, teachers. People with power use it on people without it. Most of these poems are about the ones without.

Conflict →

Seven war poems. Not one of them is about winning. They are about waiting, freezing, killing a man and remembering it.

Memory →

A dead looter behind closed eyes. A city made of sunlight. A boy on a stolen boat. The past does not stay in the past.

Identity →

Who tells your story. Agard carves out his own. The emigrée keeps her city. Dharker says we are paper.

Loss →

A mother at the front door. Ghosts dragging home. Six hundred into the valley. Every one of these poems loses someone.

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The words of the book come from the AQA Poems Past and Present anthology, Power and Conflict cluster (poems quoted briefly for study; older poems are public domain). Every quote was checked against it. Paintings and drawings are public domain, from Wikimedia Commons, credited under each one. Notes by Akash Wadhwani. Copy it. Print it. Share it. No sign-up.
Spotted a mistake? akash@sheets.works