Skirrid Hill

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The title of the poem, ‘Farther’, is a play on the word “father” and is about the distance that the two men have to go to resolve all of their problems. Sheers combines the intersection of the ideas of moment and family within this reference. This poem documents the movement over a distance, the two men scaling the hill. Yet, it is one that also explores the connection between father and son. Therefore, by choosing a title that allows for these connotations to spring forth from one word, Sheers effectively summarises the major themes of the poem under one umbrella reference. The parallel is drawn here between his father’s use of tree-planting to mark both life and death and how sometimes a sunrise and sunset can look the same. We can link this with the death of Christ in the previous poem marking the birth of Christianity, or in the fact that he rose again. Summary: A traverse around the base and steep climb to the summit followed by a gradual descent along the ridge. Summary: A gradual ascent through fields, woods and along the ridge with a steep decent from the peak.

For their walk, they have chosen “the long way round,/ through the wood, simplified by snow.” They have not chosen the easy path, nothing is straightforward. They have a long way to go, just as their relationship does, and the only simple part is the snow that makes the ground a single color (but it also is another danger on the walk). They reach a resting point on the mountain that is described as being a “cleft of earth” that was split in two by the grief of a father whose son is becoming a man. This gives the impression that the reason that the two have drifted apart is just as the son has grown up. Still with me? Excellent… this is where the collection starts showing off just what Sheers is capable of.In this poem, there is a turning point when the poet says ‘ I felt the tipping of the scales of us, / the intersection of our ages’. Sheers has become ‘the man of the family’ and his father is the frail one .

Farther’ begins by giving the reader an exact time of the year and physical setting. The action in this piece is taking place on “the day after Boxing Day.” This would be the 27th of December, two days after Christmas, and one day after the British Bank Holiday, Boxing Day.The loss of innocence caused by Sheers’ early encounter with mortality is also telling. He is unable to enjoy the simple act of playing with the abandoned cars anymore. This is partly because he has returned to the cars by himself, which may give us the suggestion that things can only be enjoyed in company. The fact that the cars seem ‘smaller’ to Sheers now suggests that the vastness of death has overshadowed his ability to engage in innocent play and he can now only see the cars as further corpses. Nature -The contrast between the natural life-affirming processes of nature, and the destructiveness and death of war. This poem stands out against the rest of the collection in terms of imagery. He uses the extended metaphor of keys and key-cutting to describe the nature of their relationship, which has the obvious sexual connotations but also the idea of things fitting together and being made for each other.

In this poem a parallel is drawn between his father’s tree-planting to mark life and death, and how sometimes a sunrise and sunset can look the same; thereby blurring the distinction between beginning and ending. Wandering Welsh Girl exists to bring you the best information about outdoor adventures & travel to off the beaten path destinations. Use italics (lyric) and bold (lyric) to distinguish between different vocalists in the same song part Last Act also serves as a manifesto of sorts for what Sheers’ sees poetry as being. Whereas theatre is based entirely on seeing human beings ‘in-role’ right until the very end, Sheers begins with the bow so that we are left with the honesty of an actor stepping out of character throughout the collection.

The emotional intimacy of ‘I turned to look at you’ is poignant after the repeated‘we’. The middle of Farther, also represented by the pair being ‘half way up’ is a point in which Sheers begins to reflect on the nature of their relationship. So, in what sense has the poet become ‘lost to man’? It could be argued that this is the implication that by leaving his hometown and going travelling, he is ‘lost’ to the myriad vices that lurk beyond the safety of the small rural community. ‘Lost to man’ could simply mean that his father is saddened that his son is no longer the innocent child he once was and has been subjected to the various evils of the world.

The final lines are ambiguous, depending on how the reader interprets these final lines, the poem can be negative or positive. On one hand, they are certainly closer before, but yet they still have an incredibly long way to go. But is the gap between the generations too far to cross, ‘farther’ than Sheers imagined? So here we have the first proper poem in the chronology of the collection. Similarly to ‘Last Act’, we begin with an aftermath. In this case it is the aftermath of the First World War, a subject that has been the subject of many of the world’s finest poets of the past hundred years. Turn right and contour around the western side of the mountain. This gradual uphill path takes you through the beautiful canopy of Pant Skirrid. Once on the south side of the mountain, turn left up a steeper section to begin climbing the ridge. Farther’ by Owen Sheers describes a trek up Skirrid Hill which Sheers and his father take on the 27th of December.The line ‘they were told to walk, not to run’ is a comment on the emotional reserve often attributed to British people, particularly of the upper classes. The idea of these brave men being lead into battle by leaders who do not care for their safety becomes key to the meanings of later poems such as ‘Tea with Dr. Hitler’ and ‘Liable to Floods’. By mentioning that swans ‘mate for life’, Sheers includes another parallel between animals and humans and allows for he and his lover to model their behaviour on that of the birds. The birds swim apart but eventually return to each other, just like the lovers’ hands. Returning to the past – There is a sense of striving to recapture what happened, while the fallen soldiers reach out to the present to tell their stories. Here we have our first hint of the uneasiness in male/female relationships in the collection. It is important that it is a female horse – use of the pronoun ‘she’ encourages us to extend the horse as a representation of all females.