The City Planners
By Margaret Atwood
By Kaitlyn, Han bin, and Sophie
Who am I?
What do I write?
Who were my influences?
My writing style
My contemporaries
The poem
- Theme
- Analysis
- Structure
What you might be asked about it…!
Who am I?
 Born 18 November 1939
 A Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and
environmental activist
 Began writing at age 6
 Became a poet at the age of 16
 Her parents encouraged her to read and learn the
importance of education
 Winner of The Canadian Bookseller's Association
Award, 1977 and London Literature Award, 1999
What do I write?
 Margaret Attwood wrote romance, historical fiction, speculative
fiction, science fiction and dystopian fiction along with:
 Double Persephone; Hawkshead Press, 1961; pamphlet.
 Kaleidoscopes Baroque: a poem; Cranbrook Academy of Art,
1965.
 Talismans For Children; Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1965.
 Speeches For Doctor Frankenstein; Cranbrook Academy of Art,
1966.
 Marsh, Hawk; Dreadnaught, 1977.
 Notes Towards a Poem That Can Never Be Written; Salamander
Press, 1981.
 Snake Poems; Salamander Press, 1983.
Who were my influences?
o Margaret Atwood was influenced a lot by her
parents. She was already writing by age 5 and was
home-schooled until 8th grade
o She looked greatly up to Northrop Frye who was
her English professor
o Her traveling experience was also a major influence
o Many famous people also influenced her, such as
William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Virginia
Woolf, John Buchan, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor
Dostoyevsky, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Alice
Munro, Jack London and many more
My writing style
 Margaret Atwood’s style of writing is has a great
sense of “private” myth and “personal” expression
 Atwood writes in an exact, vivid and witty style in her
poetry
 Her writing is often unsparing in its gaze at pain and
unfairness
 She has alternated between
My contemporaries




Charles Henri Ford (1913–2002), poet, novelist, editor
John Faulkner (1901–1963), plain-style writer
M. Carl Holman (1919–1988), author/poet/playwright
Ellen Gilchrist (born 1935), novelist/poet/short story
writer
 Muna Lee (1895–1965), author and poet
 Al Young (born 1939),
poet/novelist/essayist/screenwriter
The poem
give momentary access to the landscape
behind or under the future cracks in the
plaster when the houses, capsized, will
slide obliquely into the clay seas, gradual
as glaciers that right now nobody
notices. That is where the City
Planners with the insane faces of
political conspirators are scattered over
unsurveyed territories, concealed from
each other, each in his own private
blizzard; guessing directions, they
sketch transitory lines rigid as wooden
borders on a wall in the white vanishing
air tracing the panic of suburb order in
a bland madness of snows
Structure/Theme
 People are ignorant
 People can be blinded by only the good side
 The structure of this poem is like Singapore, it’s
planned out and the stanza’s are highly structured.
This poem has 7 stanza’s that grow smaller
 There is no rhyme scheme in this poem
 There is a a large change between stanza’s 2 and 3,
people are now included
Analysis
 “pedantic rows” is the people and how they are very repetitive
 “sanitary” is repeated, showing how clean things are in Singapore,
too clean
 “momentary” and “transitory” are talking about how nothing in the
city is temporary
 “discouraged grass” is a metaphor for the people of Singapore and
how they are forced to be kept in the same level
 “nobody notices” is showing how people are ignorant and don’t
care and how people don’t want to face the fact that the city is
being overrun
 “bland madness of snows” is the blind city and the blind people.
Also, “bland” doesn’t fit Singapore and seems ironic
 “private blizzard” is describing how the City Planners are in the
middle of the blizzard and are so caught up in what their doing, they
don’t realize what happening outside
 There is lots of en jambement to make the poem go faster and have
no control
IGCSE Exam-Style Questions
 Explore the ways in which the poet vividly conveys
her feelings about love.
 Explore some descriptions you find particularly
effective.
 Show how the poet finds beauty in the world.
 How do the poet’s words vividly reveal her feelings to
you?
 Explore the ways in which the poet appeals so
powerfully to your senses in this poem.