Glasgow sonnet is a touching poem written by Edwin Morgan and is about how Glasgow used to be, years ago and the effects that it had on people. It deals with an important issue such as poverty and we see the reality of it and how it shouldn’t be ignored. By examining Morgans use of techniques we will be able to seen more of the effects of poverty and how and things actually are Morgans makes the poem particularly effective by the use of sonnet structure, the first 8 lines show us the area and the surroundings and the second half shows us the inside of the situation including people having to deal with this poverty.

Straight away the opening line sets the scene and immediately gives us an image of the place and just how depressing the …show more content…

This part deals with poverty well as it seems theres no hope and things are getting worse and gives us the how difficult poverty actually is.

To continue on with their surroundings we get more vivid image of what their home may be like;
“roses of mould”

Roses are flowers which represent beauty and romance and they are being compared with mould which is something horrible and always unwanted. “roses of mould” is a paradox used by Morgan. Morgan seems to have a lot of mixed feelings here by putting these two things together. This deals with poverty in a particular way as we see that peoples homes are actually in fact dangerous to live in, yet nothing seems to being done and it is just being ignored when it shouldn’t be.

We now get an even more vivid image to the people living in poverty and how they are choosing to deal with its ;“ the man lies late since he has last his job”.
Here Morgans used alliteration in describing the mans actions which makes it quite effective. The extended “I” sound reflects the tired and lazy tone of thet man and the fact that he has lost his job which is a social issue and it telling us that there is no way out of the poverty and he is just accepting that and giving up. He isn’t trying to fix his failure. This shows a large extent to poverty as these people have no motivation to do anything ot even change the way they are living as they don’t know how to escape poverty.

This final line of the poem is extremely powerful