No More Hiroshimas

... 'No More Hiroshimas' by James Kirkup is a very atypical and extensive poem dealing with the feelings that the poet has whilst exploring the city of Hiroshima, several decades after the atomic bomb was dropped there during the Second World War. It follows his progress through the city, trying to find something that will let him truly appreciate the horror of the nuclear explosion. This poem shares few conventions with most other poems. It utilises blank verse, which allows it to read as a stream of consciousness rather than a carefully structured poem, and also prevents the trivialisation of the subject matter that a rhyme scheme could introduce. The only time that a rhyming couplet is used, in stanza six, it stands out dramatically. In addition, the poem is arranged into logical stanzas, each (except for the final two stanzas) dealing with a different place that Kirkup visits

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