Saving Places – I Thought I Saw

By Hannah Tobin (10)

This week's task in English was to interpretate a poem written by a 10-year-old girl, - to try to clarify the meaning of the poem and which literary devices the author uses.

I think the author tries to describe what will happen to the earth if we continue to live the way we do. Overconsumption and pollution can destroy nature and animals can be exterminated.

The poet uses several techniques to get her message out. First of all, the poem is written in a retrospective view, as the narrative voice is speaking from the future. She lives in a time where earth is deserted, and thinks she sees glimpses of nature as it was in earlier times. She concludes that the fertile soil, the sea and the animals she thought she saw are just visions or imagination, as they cannot exist in a deserted world. The poem ends with”They all died out because of me” – which I think means that the earth is destroyed due to the mankind’s polluting way of living.

She also uses repetition to emphasize her message: ”I thought I saw, I thought I saw” . This makes the reader feel that the narrator wants to see animals and nature as it was, that it is a wish, an impossible dream, because it is to late to go back to how life on earth was earlier. The repetitions also give rhythm to the poem.

I think she chose the title “Saving Places – I Thought I Saw” because all the places she thought she saw in the poem are examples of places that are important to save. A different interpretation is that she has saved the memories of these places in her mind.

The aim or the purpose of the poem is to focus on the importance of taking environmental protection seriously, if we want to keep the earth as it is. If we don’t change, the consequences are fatal.

The author is only 10 years old. I think it is impressive that a young child has written a poem like this, which is a really good description of how we can end up if things don’t change. Maybe children and young people are more concerned about the future because their future is longer than the older people’s?

- Marie