Objectives

1. Objectives By the end of today’s lesson you will be able to: • Complete a MITS analysis of “Mother…” by Simon Armitage.

2. What could the title be and why?

3. These words come from a poem about a mother and a son. What do you think the poet might be saying about ‘mother/son’ relationships from the words he has chosen to use?

4. 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. 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.

5. Questions • Why do you think the poet has used a mixture of metric and imperial measures? • Summarise what you think the relationship is like between the mother and the son. • How does the son feel, do you think, when he reaches the end of the tape and looks through the hatch of the loft? • Write down what the mother is thinking as she holds the zero end of the tape. • Make a list of what the tape might represent literally and metaphorically in the poem? • How do relationships with parents change as children grow up? Make a list of key years when the relationship changes eg learning to walk…going to school, going on holiday with friends’ family, etc etc.

6. Direct address to “mother” Why “span”? Annotate the poem using my notes and any of your own… Symbolic siginificance Measuring the room or life Metaphor for features of life Enormous size of the task Mother is there at the beginning, the anchor Implies the starting point Moving in to life gradually Single words suggest strong images (opposites?) Sense of being in air – on his own Still linked to mother, but tension high Break becomes inevitable Implies opening to life outside A vista of opportunities and freedom Final rhyme, to what effect? On his own to succeed or fail 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. 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.

7. Themes/Meaning • what is the poem about? • who is the speaker? - are they dramatized (a character) • who is being spoken to or addressed? • what is being spoken about? • Theme(s) of the poem - what is it really about? • Setting/culture- where’s the poem set? Culture it is from/about? • where does the poem “get to” from start to end? TSLAP Always link everything to meaning. Ask yourself how does this contributes to the meaning? Why has the poet used this technique? • Attitude/Tone • How would the poem be spoken? (angry, sad, nostalgic, bitter, humorous etc) • Structure • Rhyme - is there a rhyme scheme? Couplets? Internal rhyme? • Rhythm - how many syllables per line? Is it regular or free verse? Why are some different lengths? • Stanzas - How many? How do they change? Is there a narrative? • Lines - how many are their in each verse? Do some stand out? • Enjambment - do the lines “run on” to the next line or stanza? • End stopping - does each line finish at the end of a sentence? • Form - does the poem have a shape to it? • Language • What kinds of words are used? • Puns- a pun is a play on words - “Shear Class!” if Shearer scores. • Connotation - associations that words have (as "stallion" connotes a certain kind of horse with certain sorts of uses)? • Double meanings - “butts in” - putting bottoms in or interrupting. • Ambiguity - is the word or phrase deliberately unclear? Could it mean opposite things or many different things?. • Word order- are the words in an unusual order – why? • Adjectives - what are the key describing words? • Key words and phrases - do any of the words or phrases stand out? Do they shock? Are the words “violent” or “sad” etc? • Slang or unusual words and misspellings - Does the poet use slang or informal language? Are American words used? • Intertextuality - does the poem reference another text? • Style - does the poet copy another style? (Newspaper, play etc) • Characters - if there are characters how do they speak? • Imagery • Alliteration- the repeating of initial sounds. • Assonance- is the term used for the repetition of vowel sounds within consecutive words as in, 'rags of green weed hung down...'. • Metaphor - comparing two things by saying one is the other. • Simile - comparing two things saying one is like or as the other. • Personification - giving something non-human human qualities. • Onomatopoeia - words that sound like the thing they describe. • Repetition - does the poet repeat words or phrases?

8. What have we learned about the poem? What extra annotations can I add?

9. 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. 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.