Skirrid Hill

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Enjoy this leisurely stroll through the woods and around the hillside before it turns into a short, steep climb to the summit. At the wooden way marker turn right and take the path that heads directly up the hill.

The farrier is an archetypal masculine, manual labouring figure, creating a contrast with those we see in the industries of service and entertainment later on in the collection (see ‘Services’ or ‘L.A. Evening’. The fact that he is smoking a roll-up suggests an extension of the values of working with hands as well as a rejection of modern innovation and the ubiquitous health warnings on the dangers of smoking; in ‘Wake’ we see a man dying of lung-cancer, as if to create a book-end to this disregard. There is nothing modern about his attire or his physical appearance, the sideburns for example. Nature -The contrast between the natural life-affirming processes of nature, and the destructiveness and death of war. The fathers and sons have gone, ‘no more than scattered grains’, but as he points out, the landscape will be the same in ‘9, 19 or 90 years’. The poems are about personal loss and untimely death, making the contrast all the more poignant. Abergavenny is a historic market town which has a fabulous food festival in September. Throughout the year you can enjoy Michelin Starred fine dining, at the famed Walnut Inn or for some wine tasting head to Sugarloaf Vineyard. Farther’ by Owen Sheers describes a trek up Skirrid Hill which Sheers and his father take on the 27th of December.That interplay between past and present is also apparent in ‘Trees’, a poem which also looks to the future. The planting of trees is an investment in the future, no tree more so than an oak, a tree which takes decades to mature and can live for hundreds of years. The speaker’s father has planted trees to celebrate the arrival of his children and now plants an oak ‘in the middle of the top field’, which he admits with understatement will take ‘some time’ to grow. As Sheers says, the sapling is ‘loaded with the promise of what it will become’, creating an image of a fulfilling future, but the end of the poem is ambiguous. The red sun might be reflecting that promise in the ‘rising’ of the day, but equally it could be the ‘setting’ sun, often a metaphor for death. The joy of planting in the poem is inhabited by the melancholy of the realisation that the planter is unlikely to see the mature tree.

By likening the scar to ‘lovers who carve trees’, Sheers is continuing his theme of comparing that world of nature to the world of man – in this case ‘skin’ and ‘bark’ are tenor and vehicle.The only cleverness that I will credit this poem with is the way that it develops the paradox of ‘Last Act’. Sheers gave us an ‘ending’ right at the beginning of the book, now he is giving us another ending in a situation which is usually the mark of the beginning of something (getting new keys cut). As mentioned above, one option would be to stay at the Skirrid Mountain Inn. However, if you’re not so keen on things that go bump in the night there are plenty of options in nearby Abergavenny. The second is from a popular legend, which tells how the dramatic landslide on the north of the mountain was caused by an earthquake or lightning strike at the moment of the crucifixion of Jesus.

A clear narrative follow-on from ‘Show’ – the lovers have had an argument which links in with the idea of ‘skirrid’ as divorce. You Are Old, Father William by Lewis Carroll– This poem presents a conversation between a father and a son. It similarly involves the themes of the father-son relationship and the generation gap. Owen Sheers begins ‘Farther’ by giving a geographical location within which the poem is based. The eponymous ‘Skirrid’ gives a name to the hill they’re climbing and also the title of the anthology. The context of this particular hill is based on a Welsh myth which states it was formed at the moment of Jesus’ crucifixion due to God’s grief. The word ‘Skirrid’ itself comes from the Welsh ‘Ysgirid,’ which roughly translates as ‘shattered’ or ‘separated.’ This context is important to bear in mind as it introduces themes of the father and the son, basing the poem in a geographical context which mirrors the subject content.It is interesting that his father’s contributions here are weaknesses, a ‘stammer’ and ‘a tired blink’. His mother’s contributions seem to be the more positive attributes; the blue eyes, introspection and his compulsion to write. Things from the natural world, especially ‘Skirrid Hill’ itself is often referred to by female pronouns, creating the indication that nature and its strength are a female quality, whereas the male character is a weaker and more destructive force. 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. 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.