Homing by Liz Berry - Key Analysis
Ever wondered why some people change their accents to sound more "posh"? Berry's poem tackles this head-on, showing how social pressure can make us hide our true selves. The speaker's mother kept her natural accent "in a box beneath the bed" - literally locking away part of who she was.
The opening stanza reveals the violence of forced change. Notice how "how now brown cow" (a standard elocution exercise) sits alongside "the teacher's ruler across your legs" - this isn't gentle correction, it's punishment for being different. The plosive alliteration in phrases like this reflects the harsh treatment the mother endured.
Berry uses dialect words like "saft" (silly) and "blart" (cry) to show what was lost. These aren't "lesser" words - they're part of a rich linguistic heritage that got suppressed. The poem's structure moves from past shame to present reclamation, as the speaker wants to "swallow them all" and bring these lost words back to life.
Key Insight: The poem uses a cyclical structure - starting and ending with the idea of "home" - showing how identity always calls us back, no matter how far we try to run from it.