Skirrid Hill

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Digging by Seamus Heaney– It is one of the best Seamus Heaney poems. Here, the poet talks about his family tradition and how he is also upholding this tradition through his poetry. The quote is from the prologue to The Pardoner’s Tale. This is a story about men who go out with the intention of killing Death, who they blame for their friend’s passing. They end up killing each other in the end as a result of their own greed and so have found ‘death’. The poem is made up of two parts, the first comprising three 3-line stanzas, known as tercets or triplets, and a couplet. This section describes fashion models on a catwalk. There is no rhyme scheme. The hollowed out mountain side was actually more likely caused by a landslide during the ice age! Enjoy These Nearby Walks Next!

What saves this poem from being a simple bitter swipe at an old acquaintance is the fact that it comes directly after ‘Hedge School’ in the collection. Because Sheers has given us such a self-deprecating poem that alludes to Chaucer’s writing of a corrupt teller of a corrupt tale, we get the message that the poet does not see himself as any better than Jones.

Structure

So, what is the poem telling us? Unlike the rest of the collection, the poetic ‘you’ can be assumed to be the reader. The lines ‘Don’t be surprised it has taken so long to show you these’ may be indicative of the time gap between Skirrid Hill and his previous collection. If we take this to be the case then ‘the actor, bowing as himself / for the first time all night’ could be taken as an apology of sorts for his dissatisfaction with his debut collection, The Blue Book, which received a lot of criticism. This may well be a proclamation that this is Sheers’ first genuine collection of poetry – the last one was just a warm-up. 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). The title ‘Song’ is ambiguous; a love song but also a Siren song. The Sirens were Greek mythological temptresses who lured sailors to their deaths by hypnotic singing. In this poem Sheers has the woman trapped instead. It could possibly be read as a coded message of his ambivalent feelings at his failed relationship, in which he may have felt misled or trapped by the woman. Or it can be read as a carefully wrought and beautiful love poem.

While Skirrid Hill has its moments, Carrie Etter wishes Owen Sheers would learn to trust his readers more. This poem, like ‘Last Act’ gives us an ending at the beginning of the collection. There is, of course, the paradox of the situation, in that getting keys cut usually marks the start of something new.The setting is almost clichéd — the lovers are on holiday in the romance capital of Europe, Paris. Despite this, the setting seems irrelevant; their relationship is not enhanced by the location and they seem isolated from the rest of the world. The ending suggests that their love affair is in the past. 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.

Skirrid Hill’ takes its origin from the proper Welsh name, ‘Ysgirid Fawr’ which roughly translates as ‘shattered mountain’. ‘Skirrid’ can also be interpreted as meaning ‘divorced or separated’ – the common theme here is that the word ‘skirrid’ carries connotations of something that has broken down in some way – which leads us to suspect that one of the overlying themes of this collection is the natural deterioration and breakdown of things. 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. 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.Again, we have this combination of expert delicacy and care taken to alter the natural course of the animals’ lives – in this case taking away their eggs. This is perhaps the least harmful example of this however. By likening the models to birds and the photographers to a ‘crocodile pit of cameras’, Sheers is increasing the sense of men being a controlling, negative force in the world of women. Joseph Jones is depicted as an arrogant, over-bearing misogynist type of character, and by describing him as ‘the making of a small town myth’; Sheers paints a negative view of small town life and the sort of people that thrive in it.