Skirrid Hill

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So, in what sense has the poet become ‘lost to man’? This may imply that by leaving his hometown and travelling he is ‘lost’ to the dangers that lurk beyond the safety of the small rural community with a highly specific culture. Or it could simply refer to a child’s loss of innocence and dependency when he grows up. Whilst this act is taking place however, the poet is concentrating on the lights that are beginning to be turned off outside the window and seems practically oblivious to the sexual act that is being performed on him. Skirrid Hill’ takes its origin from the Welsh, ‘Ysgirid Fawr’ which roughly translates as ‘shattered mountain’. ‘Skirrid’ can also mean ‘divorced or separated’ – the theme is the connotation of something broken down or split away — the natural deterioration and separation of people and things.

Unexpected ideas are introduced, notably the casting of the woman as a ‘siren’ in a cage, and the ‘oil-spill’ of her plumage. Both of these are important in their allusion to female treachery. One refers to luring men (and even Sheers) to their deaths. The other is a matching allusion, in terms of the natural world, to entrapping and destroying male birds through the destructive spilt oil.The now ruined chapel of St Michael’s perched on the top of the summit of the Skirrid was used by Roman Catholics during and after the Reformation. Services were held at the chapel until at least 1680, when John Arnold of Llanvihangel Court said he had seen ‘a hundred papists meet on top of this hill called St Michael’s Mount where there is frequent meetings, and, eight or ten times in the year, sometimes sermons are preached there’. The Holy Mountain The Skirrid is known locally as ‘the Holy Mountain’. This may have come from two sources. The first is the now-ruined chapel of St Michael’s on the summit, which was used by Roman Catholics after the Reformation. The title of this poem is a pun on ‘father’. The poem explores the relationship between the poet and his father, and also the nature of generations and family inheritance in the emotional and spiritual sense. That the poet feels that he ‘should have known’ what his father was trying to say by planting the oak highlights their contrasting personalities. Sheers is articulate and uses words as his livelihood; yet he accepts that his father is a quieter character, more likely to speak through actions. Sheers compounds the comparison of this place with Mametz Wood, when he describes his friend’s passed father as ‘a poppy sown in the unripe corn’. The clear semantic links between poppies and the First World War, along with the car-names being described as the ‘names of the dead’ give us the sense that the War is an unshakeable image for Sheers and its effect on Wales extends far beyond the Somme. It also heightens the tension between man and nature as being almost warlike – the ongoing battle between the two is a key theme here.

This is also a fairly important moment in the collection with regards to generation gaps. At most other moments in the collection, we see a chasm of miscommunication and apprehension between the generations, as if the old and young are of different species trying in vain to understand each other. In this poem, we see the cross-over point; ‘ I felt the tipping of the scales of us, / the intersection of our ages’. Structurally things are broken up into couplets now with the final line being isolated and alone. This can be seen as symbolic of how the ‘couplet’ of him and his father has now been whittled down to one.The poem ends with ‘you rose from me / and walked into the lit hallway, / trailing the dress of your shadow behind you’. Neither partner has been sexually satisfied by the encounter – he was distracted and she feels the need to leave immediately afterwards. Yet, despite the contradiction, Sheers suggests that this history runs deep in the Welsh nation’s psyche. Sheers is presenting this as the turning point where he has become the man of the family and his father is the weaker one – although ‘Inheritance’ gives us the depiction of the father as quite a weak figure from the start.

The thigh burning climb is soon rewarded by the sight of a trig point which marks the summit. From you can enjoy fabulous views in all directions. Look out for the cone shaped hill of Sugarloaf to the west and the market town of Abergavenny to the south. Summary: A traverse around the base and steep climb to the summit followed by a gradual descent along the ridge. Divorce (if we can also take ‘divorce’ to mean the breakdown of things) and separation are absolutely crucial to this collection and, as a result the title and the note on the title are vital to the book’s meaning. The Battle of the Somme began on 1st July 1916. The opening day of the offensive saw almost 20,000 British dead, the worst casualty figures ever endured by the British Army in a single day. The return to the personal, Sheers constantly trying to link the two, ‘you are with me’ resounds on this idea of connection. Sheers, throughout Farther, is trying desperately to link himself to his father. The very purpose of the walk to reestablish a connection they have both felt grow old.The quote is from the prologue to The Pardoner’s Tale. This is a story about men who go out with the intention of killing Death, who they blame for their friend’s passing. They end up killing each other in the end as a result of their own greed and so have found ‘death’. It is highly conventional for modern poets to begin their collections with an epilogue – T.S. Eliot did this all the time. There are a number of reasons for doing this. Firstly, by linking to a famous, established piece of writing from the past, the poet is showing that they are fitting their work into ‘the poetic tradition’ and that their work is fit to sit next to the canon.