Mother, any distance greater than a single span Objectives: To understand the poem, focusing on the emotional connections conveyed by the speaker.
Family relationships What sort of relationship do you have with your mother? How do you think you’ll feel when you go to leave home? How do you think your mum will feel/react? Think about these questions FIRST and then speak with your partner.
Book of matches Book of Matches (1993) 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. Who wants to read?
What is the poem about? Very simply, what is this poem about? A son moving out and his mother helping him…but what messages are given here?
Imagery Go through the poem and look for: Language about measurement Language about movement. What do you notice? How is a sense of ‘space’ shown here?
Mother, any distance greater than a single span He is addressing her, it’s a personal poem Span is used as a pun here 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. What does this line suggest? What’s the significance of the language he uses in the last line? What does the place seem like to him and why?
What image is created in the first line? What is the tape a metaphor for? What does he mean by zero-end? What does he mean by recording and reporting? 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. Again, what is this line? How is their relationship shown? Think about the last two words. What do they represent and why is the full stop there?
What images are given in the first line? What ‘has to give’? Why is the climbing of the ladder symbolic? What images are given in the first line? 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. What is the significance of the word pinch here? How does he feel about going through the hatch? What is the point of the ellipsis?
TSLAP Themes: Structure: Language: Attitudes: Purpose: