‘Kamikaze’ – Beatrice Garland
Context
Garland was inspired to write the poem based on this article she read in The Guardian:
o https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/11/the-last-kamikaze-two-
japanese-pilots-tell-how-they-cheated-death
Garland wrote the poem to explore how people are:
o ‘Prepared to die for something they believe in’
One of the key themes Garland explores is the conflict of duties toward society and the self.
She comments:
o ‘His choice was not futile. I think it was honourable and I think he knew that in spite
of how painful it was, Japanese society did not agree.’
The poem also exhibits a conflict between nature and society
o ‘So the beauty of nature shows us, why he should not want to deprive himself and
hundreds of other young men on the ship he was supposed to have annihilated, of
that intense pleasure.'
Published as part of her 2013 collection Fireworks
o Explores the conflicts between life and death in the natural world
Interview with Beatrice Garland on the poem
o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-Tl6mkBLTs
Kamikaze
Her father embarked at sunrise
with a flask of water, a samurai sword
in the cockpit, a shaven head
full of powerful incantations
and enough fuel for a one-way
journey into history
but half way there, she thought,
recounting it later to her children,
he must have looked far down
at the little fishing boats
strung out like bunting
on a green-blue translucent sea
and beneath them, arcing in swathes
like a huge flag waved first one way
then the other in a figure of eight,
the dark shoals of fishes
flashing silver as their bellies
swivelled towards the sun
and remembered how he
and his brothers waiting on the shore
built cairns of pearl-grey pebbles
to see whose withstood longest
the turbulent inrush of breakers
bringing their father’s boat safe
– yes, grandfather’s boat – safe
to the shore, salt-sodden, awash
with cloud-marked mackerel,
black crabs, feathery prawns,
the loose silver of whitebait and once
a tuna, the dark prince, muscular, dangerous.
And though he came back
my mother never spoke again
in his presence, nor did she meet his eyes
and the neighbours too, they treated him
as though he no longer existed,
only we children still chattered and laughed
till gradually we too learned
to be silent, to live as though
he had never returned, that this
was no longer the father we loved.
And sometimes, she said, he must have wondered
which had been the better way to die.
Language
Militaristic language patterns – show power of society
o ‘Samurai sword’
o ‘Cockpit’
o ‘Shaven head’
o ‘Powerful incantations’
Natural language patterns – show power of nature
o ‘Green-blue translucent sea’
o ‘Shoals of fishes
o ‘Pearl-grey pebbles’ ’
o ‘Silver of whitebait’
Social language patterns
o ‘Journey into history’
o ‘My mother never spoke again’
o ‘The neighbours … treated him / as though he no longer existed’
o ‘We children still chartered ad laughed’
o We too learned / To be silent’
Form
A memory? A story? A war poem? A nature poem?
7 regular stanzas of six lines; free verse; lots of enjambment and no caesuras. Flood of
memories, unresolved conflicts.
Very little punctuation – notice how the first full stop precedes the direct speech in italics.
Marks this section out as powerful.
Sometimes memory, sometimes direct speech – a conflict in the form of the poem here.
Who is speaking and why? What is their motive? What conflicts arise?
o Narrator
See the opening lines
o Mother
Supposedly she is recounting a memory to her children
o Grandmother
See the closing lines
o Father
See the middle lines
Structure
Shift from power to powerlessness
Shift from the social to the natural and back again to end on society – why?
Shift from past to present
Further Questions:
What are the major themes of the poem? How do they link to the power and conflict
anthology ?
o Conflict of social duty and personal feelings
o Conflict of nature and society
o Conflicts between past and present; and generations
o Power of society/state over nature
o Power of the past
o Power of family
What other poems in the anthology does this share similarities with?
o Charge of the Light Brigade?
What other poems in the anthology does this differ from?
