writing, is the evocation of different senses. In the opening stanza, for example, the boy describes "Daylight" and "the sun." In the third stanza, the boy says that he is standing "in urine-scented hay," and in the final stanza the boy says that he "fired" his gun once more, to put the barn owl out of its misery. The evocation of different senses (sight, smell, and sound) helps the readers to imagine the scene more vividly and immerse themselves in it more completely.

Gwen Harwood's poem "Father and Child" includes two poems—"Barn Owl" and "Nightfall"—separated by many years. In the first poem, the speaker is young and inexperienced. She seeks out the barn owl to kill it, feeling at first powerful and almost god-like. Once she commits the act, she discovers she was not prepared for its outcome, the "obscene / bundle" into which the bird collapses. Her father advises her to complete the act, as it is the most humane thing to do now, and he then serves as a literal shoulder to cry on as the speaker processes this experience. In "Nightfall," the speaker's father is 80 years old and apparently near death. At this point, the speaker sees innocence in her father and wishes she had the power over life and death she saw herself as having that time in her early life when she shot the owl.

In the poems, Harwood makes use of first-person voice, anecdote, and imagery, along with some figurative language. Both poems are told in the first person voice by the speaker, who is the "child" of the title. This allows the reader to directly access the speaker's feelings before, during, and after the events of "Barn Owl," and of course to understand the speaker's complex feelings toward her father's mortality in "Nightfall." "Barn Owl" makes use of anecdote, as the story of the speaker killing the owl to prove her own power over the world around her serves as an example of a lesson learned. The anecdote also gives a context that allows the reader to understand the relationship between the father and the daughter.

Both poems include extensive imagery. "Barn Owl" sees the speaker describing the owl itself and the scene of the owl's gruesome death in vivid detail. "Nightfall," on the other hand, makes greater use of figurative language. Though the speaker implies that the father and daughter are literally on a walk, the speaker also often refers to more abstract concepts through her description. For example, in the second stanza, the speaker writes,

Since there's no more to taste
ripeness is plainly all.
Father, we pick our last
fruits of the temporal.
Eighty years old, you take
this late walk for my sake.

Any time students analyze a piece of literature and think about how and why the author constructed the piece in a particular way, and what effects that construction has on a reader, they are thinking about writing as a craft. This allows students to be metacognitive about their own writing. They will become more aware about the effects of their choices of words, their phrasing, and their use of sensory detail or figurative language. They will think about and practice the connections between form and content.

Gwen Harwood’s poem “Father and Child” has two parts: “Barn Owl” and “Nightfall.” The poem as a whole addresses the changing relationship between the speaker and their father at two different points in their lives: when the speaker is a child, and then as an adult when their father is elderly. In “Barn Owl,” the speaker undergoes a loss of innocence as they learn respect for life when their father forces them to take responsibility for another creature’s death. In “Nightfall,” the father’s advanced age encourages the speaker to contemplate mortality in a different way as well as to recall the value of the lessons he had taught them decades earlier.

In developing a piece of discursive writing, a writer could consider how the poet achieves her goals in communicating these themes. Such an analysis could address the author’s narrative methods in suggesting a more universal application of the personal experiences. The writer could incorporate analysis of literary devices the poet uses, such as symbolism involving light and dark to stand for life or youth and age or death.

For creative writing, an author might find inspiration for a poem based on similar experiences or relationships. For example, they might write about a significant moment when a parent forced them to take responsibility, a confrontation with an animal’s death, or an occasion when they observed changes in their relationship with an older relative.