Simon Armitage: Mother, any distance

greater …
 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.

5 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

10 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
15 to fall or fly.
Background

• Simon Armitage was born in West Yorkshire, in

1963.
• This poem comes from a collection called Book
of Matches (1993), which is a collection of
poems without titles. Each poem is meant to be
read in the time it takes a match to burn down -
about twenty seconds, unless you want to burn
your fingers. There is a pun in the title: we call a
packet from which we tear out the matches a
book, but this is also a book in the normal
sense, with words for us to read.
MEANING

• The speaker in this poem could be the poet

himself; he is in the process of measuring
up a house. His mother has ‘come to help’
him measure up. His mother stays put
holding the tab end of the tape measure,
while he moves through the house until he
reaches an open hatch and the end of the
spool of tape. He imagines himself in the
‘endless sky’ about to ‘fall or fly’.
• The poem is a wonderful exploration of mother
and child relationships and the tensions between
security and independence. The tape becomes
the metaphor for this relationship, symbolising
the bonds which hold them together (or not).
• Clearly, the child has moved away from home
which is a first step towards independence, and
wants to let go, but is still somewhat afraid to
‘cut the cord’ completely, as this may bring
success or failure: he will either “fall or fly”.
LANGUAGE

• In terms of the structure of the poem, it is written

in three stanzas; the first sketches the context of
the mother helping the poet to measure up in his
new home; the second extends this idea to the
metaphorical meaning of children moving away
from their parents; the third indicates the
relationship as the child breaks away, reaching
for independence, but still partly tugged back by
his mother who still pinches “the last one-
hundredth of an inch”.
• The poem is written in free verse, with lines of irregular
length, not following any set pattern, although there are
some rhyming patterns, sometimes at the end of lines,
sometimes within lines.
• The central image is drawn from the idea of the
measuring tape which is a metaphor for the strong links
connecting mother and child.
• Choice of words is effective in expressing the notions of
being fettered or free; the “acres” and “prairies” suggest
the enormity of independence, whilst “Anchor” and “zero-
end” expresse the security (arguably, imprisonment)
provided by the mother, who is seen as a fixed point in
an uncertain world; and “Kite” the freedom independence
would bring.
• The notion of the kite, however, suggests that the
child is open to influences beyond his control (in
literal terms, the wind), and this is picked up neatly
in the final stanza with the image of the “space
walker”. Again, this suggests a loss of gravity,
outside of the magnetic pull of the earth
represented by the mother.
• The allusion to “fingertips” suggests the
desperation of the mother to wish to hand on to
the ‘control’ she has always exercised over her
child, whilst the “endless sky” is a metaphor for all
of life’s adventures, once independence has been
found.
• The language the poet uses is uncomplicated and
straightforward; this contrasts, ironically, with the very
complex dilemma he now finds himself facing.
• Much use is made in the poem of enjambement,
reflecting the inexorable unreeling of the tape.
• There are, however, many pauses: the poem is far from
unpunctuated. In the second stanza, the key pauses
after “Anchor” and “Kite” allow the poet a short period of
reflection on the relative merits of security versus
freedom, suggesting again the enormity of the decision.
• The longer, drawn-out vowel sounds of the
beginning of the third stanza reflect the drifting
through space which independence would
bring; these contrast with the shorter, more
clipped vowel sounds of lines 11 -12, reflecting
the nature (and quality?) of life if the poet
remains under the protection of his mother. The
more drawn-out sounds of the final words show
that he has made his decision.