"Lament" Analysis

Background

Gillian Clarke has created a very accessible homepage on the internet

 and students might be referred to this for a brief biography. All of the details which are woven through the poem are derived from newspaper items which distressed her at the time of the Gulf War of 1991.

Title: A lament is an elegy or a mourning of the passing of someone or something.

Each item introduced by the preposition ‘for’ is being mourned.

Line 1: the green turtle is found in the Gulf. Nesting beaches occur particularly in

Oman and Yemen.

Line 5: the veil of iridescence refers to oil slicks.

Line 13: the hook-beaked turtles are an endangered species as is the dugong (Line

14), a large herbivorous marine mammal. The small population in the Gulf was

further endangered by the spillages of oil in the Gulf conflict.

Line 16: terns regularly migrate over enormous distances, some species from the

Arctic to Antarctic. Some species of tern overwinter in the Gulf and some species

breed there. Waders are long-legged birds which roam through marshes and coastal

strips for food. Many of these also migrate. The word ‘restless’ refers to its

movements as it searches for food. It is estimated that between 1 and 2 million birds

overwinter or rest in the Gulf during migration.

It should be emphasised to students that these background notes are intended only

as background information to provide a context for the real study of the poem which

starts from here.