I lost my talk

What is the poem "I lost my talk" mainly about?

• learning English

• writing poems about language

• losing one's language

• how to speak English better

Who is the speaker in the poem?

• a politician

• an author

• a teacher

• an indigenous person

Why did the speaker lose their language?

Who took the talk away according to the poem?

• the Canadian government and Church

• strangers

• her family

• a mythical force

What emotions are depicted in the poem?

• anger

• hope

• fear

• joy

How does the poem's structure reflect the speaker's experience?

What is the effect of the assonance in the phrases like "talk you took" (l.2), "snatched it away" (l.5), "scrambled ballad" (l.9) have?

• creates sympathy

• underlines anger of speaker when being forced to use another language

• demonstrates violence of people who forbid language

• supports hope of speaker

Why are there parallel structures as in "I speak like you | I think like you | I create like you" (ll. 6-8)?

• makes poem easy to understand

• shows aim of residential schools

• demonstrates anger of speaker

• underlines full assimilation to colonial standards

What is cultural genocide?

• destroying buildings that are important to a culture

• losing culture through forced assimilation

• peaceful migration

• trade war