Mother, any Distance, Simon Armitage

• Context


  ● ‘Book of matches’ poem collection - short, intense poems with insight into family life

  ● Poems in the collection are around the 14 line length of a sonnet - most are about love
• ‘Acres’ ‘prairies’


  hyperbole of vast spaces - can be daunting
• ‘one hundredth of an inch’ ‘metres’

  Semantic field of measurement explores how far he can go without mother, symbolic for the time they have spent together
• ‘The spool of tape’

  extended metaphor of tape measure - umbilical cord - physical connection or tape is connection stretched,when it ends he is ready to be independent
• ‘Zero end’


  holding since birth
• ‘Unreeling years between us’ 


  represents their history - enjambment = new phase of relationship
• 'Space-walk’


  space metaphor - left his mother’s orbit
• ‘Anchor. Kite.’


  holophrastic sentences slow the pace of the poem - showing thoughtfulness/apprehensiveness. He is the kite trying to fly, mother holding him back.\
• ‘Fingertips still pinch’


  pain - hurts mother to let him go, but will hurt the son if she doesn’t
• ‘An endless sky to fall or fly’


  no limit to opportunities, optimistic. Last line uncertainty – bird imagery of hatching and flying: breaks free of mother protection. Rhyme suggests some harmony achieved.
• Irregular rhyme


  shows the speaker’s uncertainty
• Loose sonnet


  Love poem, 15 lines so doesn't fit strongly- breaking free.
• Themes and comparisons


  Family relationships/independence/growing up: WALKING AWAY - diff perspectives, past to present shift resolution vs uncertainty, consistent rhyme structure vs erratic, imagery, separation pain, natural growing up vs hyperboles