Skirrid Hill

Product Information

Digging by Seamus Heaney– It is one of the best Seamus Heaney poems. Here, the poet talks about his family tradition and how he is also upholding this tradition through his poetry. The Welsh name Ysgyryd meaning 'split' or 'shattered' and Fawr meaning 'great' describes the hill's shape. [5] There is a rich mythology attached to the mountain, [6] [7] including a distinctive stone known as the Devil's Table. According to legend, part of the mountain is said to have been broken off at the moment of the crucifixion of Jesus. [8] There was a local tradition that earth from the Skirrid was holy and especially fertile, and it was taken away to be scattered on fields elsewhere, on coffins, and in the foundations of churches. [9] Pilgrimages were made, especially on Michaelmas Eve, to the summit.

Note on structure: notice how the last three poems have built up from triplets, to quatrains to quintains, almost like a slowing down or building up to the end. The Waste of War- Owen Sheers' poem does not mention why the men fought or how they felt about the war. Its point is to give them a posthumous voice, even if by implication; to stress that these were young vital men, so much more than a few bones dug up by farmers. 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 poem is made up of two parts, the first comprising three 3-line stanzas, known as tercets or triplets, and a couplet. This section describes fashion models on a catwalk. There is no rhyme scheme. In older literature the spelling Skyrrid is sometimes encountered and the mountain is also referred to locally as the Holy Mountain or Sacred Hill. [8] The ruins of an Iron Age hill fort and a mediæval chapel, dedicated to St. Michael, lie at the summit. [10] [11] Rudolf Hess used to walk here when he was held prisoner at nearby Maindiff Court during the early 1940s. [6] North of the mountain at Llanvihangel Crucorney, the The Skirrid Inn claims to be one of the oldest pubs in Wales. [12] Ownership and access [ edit ]

It is of some significance that this is occurring in August, yet the previous poem was Winter… a subtle device for showing the passage of time. Also perhaps the suggestion that in the colder months we are motivated by romance, whereas the warmer times of the year are more carnal and lust-fuelled if we are to take on board the image of a ‘mating season’. It is an unusual structural choice to preface a collection with an entire poem. Sheers’ choice to have this poem separated from the rest of the work suggests that this is perhaps a key or a map with which to navigate through the rest of the collection, similar perhaps to how some editions of Lord of the Rings have a map of Middle Earth before you even get to the text of the novel. The poem begins with a reference to RS Thomas – again showing the importance of Welsh identity to Sheers. Sarah Crown of the Guardian applauds Owen Sheers’ second book, Skirrid Hill, a collection that evokes ruptured terrain in taut and coherent verse. Read the full review…. So, what is the poem telling us? Unlike the rest of the collection, the poetic ‘you’ can be assumed to be the reader. The lines ‘Don’t be surprised it has taken so long to show you these’ may be indicative of the time gap between Skirrid Hill and his previous collection. If we take this to be the case then ‘the actor, bowing as himself / for the first time all night’ could be taken as an apology of sorts for his dissatisfaction with his debut collection, The Blue Book, which received a lot of criticism. This may well be a proclamation that this is Sheers’ first genuine collection of poetry – the last one was just a warm-up.

Sign Up to the Newsletter

Sheers uses the metaphor of the catwalk models as curlews — a species of long-beaked bird. He also describes the photographers as a ‘crocodile pit’; predators who endanger the women in their metaphorical role as birds.. 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. The title here clearly gives us connotations of insincerity and role-play, echoing the ‘Last Act’ of the collection’s start.

By the end of the poem the lovers have a reconciliation of sorts, but an uneasy one that leaves them physically together but emotionally very uncertain of what the future holds for them. This idea of lovers sharing a bed whilst drifting apart is reused in ‘Four Movements in the Scale of Two’ later on. The final quatrain is one of the few examples of full rhyme in the collection and is deployed as a reflection of the trite, insincere effect of the woman on his affections. 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. Song’ is an elaborate, extended metaphor, likening the young woman with whom Sheers was in a relationship to a caged magpie. This is in the style of the seventeenth century Metaphysical poets, in which writers like John Donne and Andrew Marvell wove elaborate comparisons with wit and intelligence. For example, in John Donne’s ‘The Flea’ he describes the flea that bites them both as mixing their blood, so they are bonded and therefore may as well have sex! An elaborate metaphor like this is called a ‘metaphysical conceit’. 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.This, in many ways, mimics the farrier, in that it is an intimate physical act between a male and female whereby the female comes off permanently scarred. We might link this idea to that of childbirth in the way that Sheers writes ‘we worked up that scar’ – a thing that the two of them did together that left its mark on only her body. It is also true that they walk together, ‘choosing the long way round’, not only purposely extending their time together, but also walking directly through the ’wood’, embracing their Welsh tradition which links closely to nature. Yet, this idea of ‘the long way’ could also be a reference to the type of relationship the two men have. Instead of being direct with each other, they tend to meander in their conversation, finding it hard to connect directly to one another. Skirrid mountain has a distinctive shape. It stands separated from the rest of the range, with one side hollowed out and a long ridge leading from it’s summit. On the summit there are ruins of an Iron Age Hill fort and a Medieval chapel dedicated to St. Michael. There is a quotation from the medieval writer, Geoffrey Chaucer at the beginning of this poem. Why has he done this?