Explore some of the ways in which poets express change.

A key example of a poet expressing change comes in Carol Ann Duffy's 'Originally' from her 1990 collection The Other Country. In the poem, Duffy utilises imagery such as that of the turning wheels to suggest irreversible change which becomes irreconcilable with the concept of the self. The poetic voice comes from a position of displacement, of feeling foreign or alien in a strange and uncouth landscape, which is reflected in Duffy's disgust at seeing her brother swallow a slug in addition to the changes she feels occuring in her speech and acts: for example, how her tongue sheds to sound like others in her classroom, connoting irreversible change and a sense of loss. Ultimately, in the poem this change is equatable to loss overall, causing Duffy's portrayal of change to be wholly negative.