1
KFourie, West Coast Education District
What life is really like
Beverly Rycroft
1. You need to toughen up 25. You see life is a fight for survival
2. my father would complain 26. he’d shout, forgetting
3. when I was small 27. he was not lecturing his students
4. I ought to take you to see 28. or giving his inaugural address
5. chickens having their heads 29. You gotta roll with the punches.
6. chopped off.
7. That’d teach you 30. i waited and waited for the bitter
8. What life is really like. 31. roughness to spy me and circle
32. in to land
9. He’d seek me out 33. years and years
10. when one of his pigeons 34. of flinching anticipation intil
11. – crazed for home or 35. the day i came home from hospital
12. mad with terror from a
13. roaming hawk – 36. and my father dressed my wound.
14. would tumble into
15. the loft 37. Easing with practiced hands
16. mutilated by 38. the drip from my bulldozed chest
17. wire or beak. 39. he renewed the plaster in breathing silence
40. never speaking never
18. I was the one made to 41. once saying
19. clench my palm round
20. its pumping chest, 42. Life’s a bastard
21. to keep it still while 43. Toughen Up.
22. my father’s hairy fingers stitched
23. its garotted throat
24. angerly to rights again.
@Juffrou_Ansie
, 2
THE POET
Beverly Rycroft was born in the Eastern Cape. She is a
graduate of the University of Cape Town and the University of
the Witwatersrand. She worked as a teacher for several years
before turning full time to writing and journalism. Her articles
have been published widely both locally and internationally.
She lives in Cape Town with her family. Missing (Modjaji Books,
2010) is her first collection of poems. In 1997 Beverly Rycroft was
STRUCTURE
diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. The poems in her
debut collection, Missing, chart the experience of facing The poem ‘What life is really like’ is a lyrical
mortality, illness and the hope of recovery. poem written in free verse. Modern lyric
poetry is a formal type of poetry which
expresses personal emotions or feelings,
typically spoken in the first person.
The poem consists of 43 lines of unequal
SUMMARY
length. It has 8 stanzas.
he poem deals with the poet’s
relationship with her father, a university
lecturer, who feels she should know that
the world is not a kind place, and that
she should ‘toughen up’.
To ‘teach’ her about life, he wants to
involve her in experiences that show
suffering, pain and death (in the
examples, the killing of a chicken, or the
stitching of the wound on a pigeon).
However, the father becomes more
reflective, silent, when faced with her
@Juffrou_Ansie own suffering.
KFourie, West Coast Education District
What life is really like
Beverly Rycroft
1. You need to toughen up 25. You see life is a fight for survival
2. my father would complain 26. he’d shout, forgetting
3. when I was small 27. he was not lecturing his students
4. I ought to take you to see 28. or giving his inaugural address
5. chickens having their heads 29. You gotta roll with the punches.
6. chopped off.
7. That’d teach you 30. i waited and waited for the bitter
8. What life is really like. 31. roughness to spy me and circle
32. in to land
9. He’d seek me out 33. years and years
10. when one of his pigeons 34. of flinching anticipation intil
11. – crazed for home or 35. the day i came home from hospital
12. mad with terror from a
13. roaming hawk – 36. and my father dressed my wound.
14. would tumble into
15. the loft 37. Easing with practiced hands
16. mutilated by 38. the drip from my bulldozed chest
17. wire or beak. 39. he renewed the plaster in breathing silence
40. never speaking never
18. I was the one made to 41. once saying
19. clench my palm round
20. its pumping chest, 42. Life’s a bastard
21. to keep it still while 43. Toughen Up.
22. my father’s hairy fingers stitched
23. its garotted throat
24. angerly to rights again.
@Juffrou_Ansie
, 2
THE POET
Beverly Rycroft was born in the Eastern Cape. She is a
graduate of the University of Cape Town and the University of
the Witwatersrand. She worked as a teacher for several years
before turning full time to writing and journalism. Her articles
have been published widely both locally and internationally.
She lives in Cape Town with her family. Missing (Modjaji Books,
2010) is her first collection of poems. In 1997 Beverly Rycroft was
STRUCTURE
diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. The poems in her
debut collection, Missing, chart the experience of facing The poem ‘What life is really like’ is a lyrical
mortality, illness and the hope of recovery. poem written in free verse. Modern lyric
poetry is a formal type of poetry which
expresses personal emotions or feelings,
typically spoken in the first person.
The poem consists of 43 lines of unequal
SUMMARY
length. It has 8 stanzas.
he poem deals with the poet’s
relationship with her father, a university
lecturer, who feels she should know that
the world is not a kind place, and that
she should ‘toughen up’.
To ‘teach’ her about life, he wants to
involve her in experiences that show
suffering, pain and death (in the
examples, the killing of a chicken, or the
stitching of the wound on a pigeon).
However, the father becomes more
reflective, silent, when faced with her
@Juffrou_Ansie own suffering.
