The poem "This is What I'll Remember" by South African poet Gabeba Baderoon contemplates memory through vivid imagery of a walk through a misty park. It describes the fading autumnal colors and "ramshackle roses" before moving to recount sitting with her mother in her final days, hearing her mother's "calm detail of need". The poem ends by stating that the roses' "insistent memory" of "the point where we turned / and became open with each another" is what the speaker will remember, despite "the cold" that had come.

1. SOUTH AFRICAN POETRY:
FROM PROTEST TO
POST-APARTHEID

2. HOW TO DO A CRITICAL ANALYSIS
OF A POEM
“This is what I’ll remember”
– Gabeba Baderoon
SA Poetry, Lecture 6

3. ABOUT THE POET:
GABEBA BADEROON
She was born in 1969 in Port
Elizabeth
Poet, writer, academic
Research interests:
Women’s Studies
Media Studies
Islam in South Africa
Recipient of four major poetry
awards
Interested in the idea of memory

4. Mist in the park
brings slow clarity to the landscape.
We walk a long circuit from the metal gates
down the straight, formal mall,
past the statues and the open spaces falling
to the left and to the right.
After the frost, the trees show
the last of their colour.
THIS IS WHAT I’LL REMEMBER

5. Before the steps to the monolith peering
out of the mist – what everything leads to –
crowd the ramshackle roses, formal too,
but blown, their colours like autumn now,
remembered yellow, the pinks and reds touched
with brown. Not brilliant, no longer
what we recall of roses,
but this state before they fall
and the bushes hold life during winter
close as a small spark.
THIS IS WHAT I’LL REMEMBER

6. As the garden gradually reveals
itself, we walk into time
and are released to talk of death.
The time it took
to sit in your mother’s presence
and hear what was being said
when at last she asked for help,
but only for the periphery –
to buy something she had seen
in the newspaper, to read to her.
No request came
closer to the body.
THIS IS WHAT I’LL REMEMBER

7. To stay by her bedside
and hear the calm detail of need
was to feel a kind of beauty, impossible
to say, but the beauty of dying, the beauty
of sitting in the presence of dying.
THIS IS WHAT I’LL REMEMBER

8. The roses’ insistent memory,
small collectivity before they fall –
this is what I’ll remember
as the point where we turned
and became open with each another,
our memories held close
despite the fact that the cold had come,
on time.
THIS IS WHAT I’LL REMEMBER

9. There are three steps that you need to follow when
doing a critical analysis:
1. Identify line(s) or expression(s) that you consider
significant
2. Explain which literary device is applicable and how it
functions
3. Show what effect it has on the creation of meaning
in the text as a whole
HOW TO DO A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF A POEM

10. THIS IS WHAT I’LL REMEMBER
Poem is a
contemplation
on memory
Title is simultaneously
clear and uncertain:
readers do not know what
“this” refers to

11. Mist in the park
brings slow clarity to the landscape.
We walk a long circuit from the metal gates
down the straight, formal mall,
past the statues and the open spaces falling
to the left and to the right.
After the frost, the trees show
the last of their colour.
What does this
contrasting
imagery
suggest about
memory?
First person
point of view:
the poem
recounts the
details of
‘characters’
Simultaneous
description of
natural
environment: what
season is being
described here?
What does this
symbolise?
What is significant
about this rhythm?

12. Before the steps to the monolith peering
out of the mist – what everything leads to –
crowd the ramshackle roses, formal too,
but blown, their colours like autumn now,
remembered yellow, the pinks and reds touched
with brown. Not brilliant, no longer
what we recall of roses,
but this state before they fall
and the bushes hold life during winter
close as a small spark.
What does this image suggest?
Metaphor:
what is the
significance of
this image?

13. As the garden gradually reveals
itself, we walk into time
and are released to talk of death.
The time it took
to sit in your mother’s presence
and hear what was being said
when at last she asked for help,
but only for the periphery –
to buy something she had seen
in the newspaper, to read to her.
No request came
closer to the body.
What is
suggested here
about the
speaker’s
relationship with
her mother?
Why is
there a
change in
pronouns
and point
of view?

14. To stay by her bedside
and hear the calm detail of need
was to feel a kind of beauty, impossible
to say, but the beauty of dying, the beauty
of sitting in the presence of dying.
What is the
rhythm (and pace)
of these line?

15. The roses’ insistent memory,
small collectivity before they fall –
this is what I’ll remember
as the point where we turned
and became open with each another,
our memories held close
despite the fact that the cold had come,
on time.
What does this
image suggest?
What is the
effect of the
personification? What does
this
suggest
about the
function of
memory?
What is the
effect of this
image?

16. “Old photographs”
– Gabeba Baderoon

17. On my desk is a photograph of you
taken by the woman who loved you then.
In some photos her shadow falls
in the foreground. In this one,
her body is not that far from yours.
Did you hold your head that way
because she loved it?
Old photographs

18. She is not invisible, not
my enemy, nor even the past.
I think I love the things she loved.
Of all your old photographs, I wanted
this one for its becoming. I think
you were starting to turn your head a little,
your eyes looking slightly to the side.
Was this the beginning of leaving?
Old photographs