Skirrid Hill

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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.

A clear narrative follow-on from ‘Show’ – the lovers have had an argument which links in with the idea of ‘skirrid’ as divorce. 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’. The Battle of the Somme began on 1st July 1916. The opening day of the offensive saw almost 20,000 British dead, the worst casualty figures ever endured by the British Army in a single day. A substitute for reading all of the poems in Skirrid Hill many, many times… in fact, the only way to get anything out of this commentary is to read the poems a couple of times first, then read my commentary, then read the poems again.Summary: A traverse around the base and steep climb to the summit followed by a gradual descent along the ridge. Sheers is aware that much poetry was written during the war itself and no amount of empathy could move him to write something which would transcend existing accounts of the experience itself. However, by writing about the aftermath of the war, he is able to convey the profound grief and injustice caused by the event and its ongoing effects.

However, there is another meaning, in that a father may grieve for the ‘loss’ of a small boy to the man he grows into. In other words, parents feel sadness when their children become adults and grow apart from them. 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 extended metaphor of the caged magpie dominates the poem. It begins simply in the first line of stanza one, then increasingly elaborate ideas are woven in; for example, the poet feeding her insects and protecting her from the elements with his wings.The ‘elephant’s graveyard of cars’ is a potent image within the collection as it reminds us of Mametz Wood. The ground is gradually purging itself of the manmade impositions (it was dead bodies and their uniforms in the first poem, now it is ‘dead’ abandoned cars). This is clearly a link with Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘digging’ in which the poet likens his pen to a spade. I Will Go With My Father a-Ploughing by Joseph Campbell– This poem describes the months of a boy’s life as he works alongside his father. It also explores the emotional connection between a father and his son.

The final two lines reflect upon the title, with the idea of each ‘step’ they take on this shared journey (each ‘step’ further away), being one that brings them closer together. Father to Son by Elizabeth Jennings– In this poem, the poet portrays the generation gap between a father and his son. The poem presents a father’s illusions regarding his son. Yet for me, it is the contemporary resonance of Sheers’ poems that makes them so poignant and enjoyable. Perhaps it is because I so often find myself immersed in the poetry of the past that, which whilst often brilliant, does not resonate with me personally, but Sheers’ seems to me to be writing for a twenty-first century audience. This collection, published in 2006 when he was only 32, I feel speaks to a new generation and his concerns are those of the contemporary reader even as he delves into the past. As such, they vibrate with meaning. This transition we see in the role of the farrier is an interesting one and could be used as an illustration of ‘masculinity’ being just another ‘role’ or pretention that does not stand up to interrogation. 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.

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This may sound like a tangent but it isn’t… think about it, we’re talking about the struggle for identity in Modern Literature. What could be a clearer example of this than a young, handsome poet desperate to prove to his older academic peers that he is just as intelligent and worthy of a place in the literary world as them? By placing himself in the tradition of TS Eliot, a well-established poet who also began writing at a young age, Sheers is establishing his own identity as a serious poet.