Simon Armitage's Harmonium, My Father, Mice And Snakes

Out of the numerous poems Simon Armitage has written throughout his eighteen years of writing, there seems to be a common reoccurring concept in many of his poems. In several of his most famous poems - such as Harmonium, My Father, Mice and Snakes, and Mother Any Distance – the relationship between a parent and their child, and the idea of growing up is portrayed skilfully to show the transition from a child to an adult. Through describing these two ideas in his poems, Armitage highlights the responsibility that comes with newfound independence as an adult, making his poems extremely popular and influential in education facilities as well as to the wider audience. An analysis of his works therefore seems appropriate and interesting.

Simon Armitage has a variety of approaches to show the audience his view of the parent-child relationship and coming of age. In “Harmonium”, the father is compared to an old Harmonium that’s about to be thrown away. In “Mice and Snakes” however, the narrator directly describes his thoughts, and in “My Father…” the dependency of a child towards their father is exposed under the pretence of a trivial conflict of ear peircings.

Main Body

In “Mice and Snakes…”, the narrator states boldly in the first line that “mice and snakes don’t give me the shivers”. It

In both Mice and Snakes and in Harmonium, Armitage tackles the idea of death. Similar to Mice and Snakes, the ending of Harmonium is the premonition of his fathers death. The father mentions himself that he will be in the next coffin that the son carries. However, instead of the father seeming like the near-death person, the son is “too starved of breath to make itself heard”. This role-reversal shows that the son is actually the one that is most affected by the death of his father, and not the father