Background Material by Tony Harrison

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Speaking and Listening

Background Material by Tony Harrison

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Tony Harrison, the author and son, appears to have written this poem about his parents, and his relationship with them.  This poem appears to be recalling moments of family unity-moments of both sadness and happiness.  

The son appears to be sat at a desk, perhaps at an office or study at their family home.  A double frame sits on the desk, reminding him of good times.  He looks at the two photo’s, and thinks about them both carefully.

In my opinion, he wasn’t as close to his parents as he would have wished, or perhaps he feels now he didn’t know them as well as he thought.  

In the first stanza, he informs us of the two photographs on his desk-one of his mother, and one of his father.  He intimates that their relationship as a married couple, which lasted for at least 40 years, was not as good as the longerity implies.

“Neither one a couple, and both bad.”

This tells me that these are individual photo’s taken on shared occasions.  This line suggests to me that the quality of the picture wasn’t very good, and perhaps spoilt the photo’s memories.  

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I agree with your idea that their marriage wasn’t all that was made out to be, and they weren’t as happy as they would have liked to have been.  This line gives me the impression that the two pictures hold bad memories for him, as well as good memories.  Good memories as they’re photo’s of his parents, who I believe are both dead, but bad memories also as they were not together in the photo’s.

This is a reasonable point to make, but returning to the idea of bad quality, this is backed up by the following line ...

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