Funny Face by Rozanna Lilley – Poem Analysis
Title:
At first the title “Funny Face”, gives us the impression of a poem full of fun and humour. But after reading the poem, we get a totally different way of seeing the titel. We get a sens of the funny face being something the girls of the pageant put on to satisfying the judgeses and the mothers. It is the only way these young girls can stand to do the pageants for the sake of their mothers.

Settings: Funny face mainly takes place in a place called Garden City, I think that Garden City is what they call a special place in their backyard, since it is called ‘Garden’ City, it a place where they come to have fun. It is what would be considered the perfect place to be, since everyone seem very happy, for instance “She said I was beautiful and my mother, laughing, agreed” they really seem to be having a great time in Garden City. The poem switches between several places, but the main story takes place in Garden City. They go from being in Garden city to a stage where the girl has to perform and put on her funny face.

Narration:
The poem is written with a first person narrator. The writer is a young girl who is being forced to enter this Beauty pageant. It is propebly the mother of the child who is making her go. She do not really want to go to these pageant and she does not like being there. The girl finds it very shallow and fake in some sort of way.

Form and structure:
In the poem there is five verses, the verses is not uniform. The first verse has six lines, the second has four, the third has five, the fourth has four and the fifth only has two. There is no form in the lines either, they are all over the place, some of them is placed normaly and others are pushed to the side.

Poetic language:
There is a lot of Personification, when giving a human quality to a non-human thing, ex. “The looking glass audience a milling mass of expectant eyes”
The narrator is also using symbolism, when an object or person that represents some other quality, ex. “It’s a pencil for writing close-clutched I compose my exit”

Conclusion:
A beauty pageant is a competition that has traditionally focused on the physical beauty of its contestants, although such contests have evolved to also incorporate personality, intelligence, talent, and answers to judges' questions as judged criteria. But this poem is sitting the pageant in another light, it shows us the downside of all this beauty or fake beauty as you might say after reading the poem.