Unseen poetry

Section C Read 'Night Shift'. In 'Night Shift', how does the poet present the speaker's feelings about their mother? Night Shift (written for this paper) My mother comes home as the milk float hums, her uniform creased like a folded map, the hospital still on her hands — that clean, sharp smell that never quite leaves. She sits at the kitchen table in the grey, too tired to take her shoes off, and drinks her tea with both palms round the mug as if it were the last warm thing on earth. I am leaving for school. We pass like two trains on the same line, one slowing into the station, one pulling out. She says, Did you eat? I say, Yes. Neither of us is telling the truth.

Read 'Inheritance'. In both 'Night Shift' and 'Inheritance' the speakers describe feelings about family members. What are the similarities and/or differences between the methods the poets use to present these feelings? Inheritance (written for this paper) They gave me my grandfather's watch in a box that smelled of his drawer: peppermints, pipe smoke, Sunday. It had stopped at ten past four. I wound it once and it ticked — a small, insistent heart — then slowed, and caught, and stuttered, and would not start. I keep it on my desk. It tells the wrong time twice a day and the right one never: the hour he put it down, and went away.