'Request to a Year' by Judith Wright (detailed analysis)

Detailed analysis by Claire’s Notes of ‘Request to a Year’ by Judith Wright
Cambridge iGCSE: Songs of Ourselves Volume 4

"Request to a Year" is a poignant, autobiographical poem that delves into inherited memory within the poet's family history, recounting a near-drowning incident documented in a surviving sketch. Judith Wright admires her great-great-grandmother's stoicism and mental fortitude as she carried on sketching even though her son's life was in mortal danger. Beyond this admiration, the poem explores themes of motherhood, art, memory, inheritance, and the documentation of history. It also critiques the societal constraints placed on women during the nineteenth century. Wright uses this deeply personal narrative to reflect on the complexities of familial legacy and the enduring impact of past experiences on future generations.

Request to a Year by Judith Wright

If the year is meditating a suitable gift,
I should like it to be the attitude
of my great- great- grandmother,
legendary devotee of the arts,

who having eight children
and little opportunity for painting pictures,
sat one day on a high rock
beside a river in Switzerland

and from a difficult distance viewed
her second son, balanced on a small ice flow,
drift down the current toward a waterfall
that struck rock bottom eighty feet below,

while her second daughter, impeded,
no doubt, by the petticoats of the day,
stretched out a last-hope alpenstock
(which luckily later caught him on his way).

Nothing, it was evident, could be done;
And with the artist's isolating eye
My great-great-grandmother hastily sketched the scene.
The sketch survives to prove the story by.

Year, if you have no Mother's day present planned,
Reach back and bring me the firmness of her hand.


My poetry videos all have the same structure: I start by putting the poem into its historical and biographical context where this enhances its understanding and give a short summary of the poem itself; I then look at the poem in its entirety, picking out structural features, such as metre (rhythm), any rhyming and patterns in language which the poet uses; I finish by going through the poem on a line-by-line basis, giving definitions of words and offering an interpretation of the poet’s words with justification. Most of the terminology I use (in green) is provided with a definition below, so even if you haven’t come across it before, you should still be able to understand the points I am making.

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Please note that any literature analysis is highly subjective and may disagree with analysis by another person. All interpretations are valid if they can be justified by reference to the text. This interpretation is my own: it is not exhaustive and there are alternatives!

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