Simon Armitage Mother, Any Distance Greater

Simon Armitage: Mother, any distance greater « Mother, any distance greater than a single span requires a second pair of hands. You come to help me measure windows, pelmets, doors, the acres of the walls, the prairies of the floors. 5 You at the zero-end, me with the spool of tape, recording length, reporting metres, centimetres back to base, then leaving up the stairs, the line still feeding out, unreeling years between us. Anchor. Kite. I space-walk through the empty bedrooms, climb the ladder to the loft, to breaking point, where something has to give; two floors below your fingertips still pinch the last one-hundredth of an inch « I reach towards a hatch that opens on an endless sky to fall or fly. 10 15 Background ‡ Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire, in 1963. ‡ This poem comes from a collection called Book of Matches (1993), which is a collection of poems without titles. Each poem is meant to be read in the time it takes a match to burn down about twenty seconds, unless you want to burn your fingers. There is a pun in the title: we call a packet from which we tear out the matches a book, but this is also a book in the normal sense, with words for us to read. MEANING ‡ The speaker in this poem could be the poet himself; he is in the process of measuring up a house. His mother has µcome to help¶ him measure up. His mother stays put holding the tab end of the tape measure, while he moves through the house until he reaches an open hatch and the end of the spool of tape. He imagines himself in the µendless sky¶ about to µfall or fly¶. ‡ The poem is a wonderful exploration of mother and child relationships and the tensions between security and independence. The tape becomes the metaphor for this relationship, symbolising the bonds which hold them together (or not). ‡ Clearly, the child has moved away from home which is a first step towards independence, and wants to let go, but is still somewhat afraid to µcut the cord¶ completely, as this may bring success or failure: he will either ³fall or fly´. LANGUAGE ‡ In terms of the structure of the poem, it is written in three stanzas; the first sketches the context of the mother helping the poet to measure up in his new home; the second extends this idea to the metaphorical meaning of children moving away from their parents; the third indicates the relationship as the child breaks away, reaching for independence, but still partly tugged back by his mother who still pinches ³the last onehundredth of an inch´. ‡ The poem is written in free verse, with lines of irregular length, not following any set pattern, although there are some rhyming patterns, sometimes at the end of lines, sometimes within lines. ‡ The central image is drawn from the idea of the measuring tape which is a metaphor for the strong links connecting mother and child. ‡ Choice of words is effective in expressing the notions of being fettered or free; the ³acres´ and ³prairies´ suggest the enormity of independence, whilst ³Anchor´ and ³zeroend´ expresse the security (arguably, imprisonment) provided by the mother, who is seen as a fixed point in an uncertain world; and ³Kite´ the freedom independence would bring. ‡ The notion of the kite, however, suggests that the child is open to influences beyond his control (in literal terms, the wind), and this is picked up neatly in the final stanza with the image of the ³space walker´. Again, this suggests a loss of gravity, outside of the magnetic pull of the earth represented by the mother. ‡ The allusion to ³fingertips´ suggests the desperation of the mother to wish to hand on to the µcontrol¶ she has always exercised over her child, whilst the ³endless sky´ is a metaphor for all of life¶s adventures, once independence has been found. ‡ The language the poet uses is uncomplicated and straightforward; this contrasts, ironically, with the very complex dilemma he now finds himself facing. ‡ Much use is made in the poem of enjambement, reflecting the inexorable unreeling of the tape. ‡ There are, however, many pauses: the poem is far from unpunctuated. In the second stanza, the key pauses after ³Anchor´ and ³Kite´ allow the poet a short period of reflection on the relative merits of security versus freedom, suggesting again the enormity of the decision. ‡ The longer, drawn-out vowel sounds of the beginning of the third stanza reflect the drifting through space which independence would bring; these contrast with the shorter, more clipped vowel sounds of lines 11 -12, reflecting the nature (and quality?) of life if the poet remains under the protection of his mother. The more drawn-out sounds of the final words show that he has made his decision.