Letters from Yorkshire

Summary ofLFY

• Comparing lives of two people. – one who lives in the city and one who lives in the rural.  They write letters to each other sharing their lives.

• The voice appears jealous of his life, questioning whether his is ‘more real’, though she thinks he would say otherwise its clear that is how she thinks he would say otherwise its clear that is how she feels.

• It is apparent that they both enjoy each other’s letters

Context in LFY

Writer was Cornish and lived in Bristol as a kid, moved to Yorkshire and then to London. Poem reflects the disparity between rural and urban life. Her other poems also contain theme of communication.

Key themes in LFY

• Long distance links

• Nature

• Strong bond

• Love

• Longing

• Distance

Who is the LFY written about

Male friend/ Father

Focus of the LFY

The first four stanzas are centred on the speaker and her father's separate lives, the tone changes in the last stanzas showing they are together. Dooley changes pronouns: from "he", to the direct address of "you", to the use of "our" in the final stanza

Individual to Combined narrative

Poem Opening in LFY

uses asyndetic listing to describe the man’s life

Use of Metaphors in LFY

To describe the friend/father’s job:

• creates a joyful tone, to symbolise the guy’s enjoyment of it

To describe the narrators job:

• creates a negative tone, and complicated relationship

How is weather used in LFY

Dooley uses the weather in order to show the unconventionality of their relationship.

There is contrast between "reddened in the warmth" and "in the cold".

→The juxtaposition between warmth and the cold is representative of the characters bringing warmth into their lives through letter writing when there should be cold and distance between them.

Similarities between LFY and Mother Any Distance

• In both poems, characters employ unconventional means in order to maintain a healthy, loving relationship.

• In "Mother, any distance", the speaker describes that they "reach towards a hatch that opens on an endless sky to fall or fly" with "the line still feeding out", this shows how their mother is now allowing them more freedom in order to grow as a person.

• Similarly, in "Letters from Yorkshire", the speaker maintains a close relationship with her father/friend who "sends word of that other world". Their means of maintaining communication is shown to be successful by the heart warming metaphor in the final line, "our souls tap out messages across the icy miles".

Differences between LFY and Mother Any Distance

In "Letters from Yorkshire", Dooley presents a gap closing between two people through the visual imagery of somebody "pouring air and light into an envelope" as well as the antithesis (complete opposite) in "watching the same news in different houses". Conversely, in "Mother, any distance' Armitage depicts two people growing further apart through the extended metaphor of a tape measure in "the line still feeding out" and "unreeling years between us".