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Ingrid de Kok

Small passing

More challenging questions

Lorraine Knickelbein
Grens High School
Updated: 4 March 2014
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"Small Passing" deals with the shock of losing one's baby in a society where death is an everyday reality.

For the mother, the death of her own child is a tragedy beyond parallel and yet the poet gets reminded often -- mainly by males -- that this is nothing compared with the greater tragedy happening all around her in apartheid South Africa, where death is the norm.

On the other hand, the Black women do not see it that way. They are able to comfort her and see in her loss a genuine catastrophe which is indeed comparable with all the other tragedies happening around them. Hers is literally no small passing.



ABOUT THE POET

Ingrid de Kok is the professional name of Ingrid Jean Fiske. She was born in Johannesburg in 1951 and grew up in Stilfontein, a gold mining town in what is now the North-West Province of South Africa.

She studied at Queens' University in Canada before returning to South Africa. Today she is an Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town's Centre for Extra-Mural Studies.

To date she has published three collections of poetry, and her poems have appeared in at least eleven overseas anthologies. They have also been translated into several different languages, including Turkish.

She has been the recipient of at least three prestigious prizes for her contribution to English Literature.

Have you looked at the questions
in the right column?
TEST YOURSELF!
Read the left column and then answer
the following questions:



"In this country you may not
suffer the death of your stillborn.
"

The poet often refers to "this country".
  • What is her tone in doing so? Be able to explain your answer carefully. (4)

[Need help?]




"And this woman's hands are so heavy when she dusts
the photographs of other children
they fall to the floor and break.
Clumsy woman, she moves so slowly
as if in a funeral rite.
"
  • Why are the woman's hands "so heavy [that] when she dusts the photographs of other children they fall to the floor"? (4)

[Need help?]

  • Why does she "move so slowly as if in a funeral rite"? (4)

[Need help?]




"On the pavements the nannies meet.
These are legal gatherings.
They talk about everything, about home,
while the children play among them,
their skins like litmus, their bonnets clean.
"
  • Explain the significance of the words: "These are legal gatherings." (4)

[Need help?]

  • Explain the significance of the simile, "their skins like litmus". (4)

[Need help?]




"Child shot running,
stones in his pocket,
boy's swollen stomach
full of hungry air.
Girls carrying babies
not much smaller than themselves.
Erosion. Soil washed down to the sea.
"
  • The poet refers to the "child shot running, stones in his pocket". What is her intention behind the inclusion of these words? (4)

[Need help?]

  • At the end of this section, the poet deviates from references to people and speaks about soil erosion. What is the connection? (4)

[Need help?]




"I think these mothers dream
headstones of the unborn.
Their mourning rises like a wall
no vine will cling to.
They will not tell you your suffering is white.
They will not say it is just as well.
They will not compete for the ashes of infants.
I think they may say to you:
Come with us to the place of mothers.
We will stroke your flat empty belly,
let you weep with us in the dark,
and arm you with one of our babies
to carry home on your back.
"
  • The word "they" is repeated in this section. To whom does "they" refer? (2)

[Need help?]

  • What effect has the poet created by repeating the word? (4)

[Need help?]

  • How does this section contrast with the rest of the poem? (4)

[Need help?]




What is the poet's intention with the writing of this poem? (4)

[Need help?]




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