Family & Loss
Family Love in the Relationships Collection
Not all poems in the collection are about romantic love. Three poems explore the intense, complicated bonds between parents and children: Joanna Baillie’s “A Child to his Sick Grandfather,” Vernon Scannell’s “Nettles” and Ingrid de Kok’s “My Father Would Not Show Us.” Each presents a different angle on parental protection — a child trying to protect a dying grandparent, a father protecting his child from physical pain, and a father failing to show his children vulnerability. These poems offer strong comparison material for the Part 1 question because they share the theme of family love but use very different methods.
A Child to his Sick Grandfather — Joanna Baillie (1790)
Baillie (1762–1851) was a Scottish poet and playwright who was widely admired in her lifetime but is now less well-known. This poem is spoken in the voice of a young child addressing a grandfather who is visibly ill and ageing. The child’s innocent, affectionate observations make the poem both tender and heartbreaking, because the reader understands what the child does not — the grandfather is dying.
The poem’s power comes from dramatic irony. The child cheerfully tries to comfort the grandfather (“I’ll lead you kindly by the hand”), not understanding that no help or kindness can reverse what is happening. The gap between the child’s innocent optimism and the reader’s knowledge of death creates deep pathos.
Key language: “Grand-dad, they say you’re old and frail, / Your stocked legs begin to fail” — the child catalogues the grandfather’s physical deterioration with innocent directness. There is no euphemism, no polite avoidance — the child describes what they see. The simple, monosyllabic vocabulary reflects the child’s young age and limited understanding, while the listing of failing body parts (head, leg, leg) creates a painful accumulation of decline.
Key structure: The poem is written in rhyming couplets with a regular rhythm, giving it a sing-song, nursery-rhyme quality that suits the child speaker. This innocently cheerful form contrasts with the devastating subject matter — the juxtaposition between the light form and the dark content is what makes the poem so moving.
Nettles — Vernon Scannell (1980)
Scannell (1922–2007) served in World War II and was deeply affected by his military experience. “Nettles” describes a simple incident: his young son falls into a bed of nettles and is stung. The father comforts the boy, then attacks the nettles with a billhook, but two weeks later the “busy sun and rain” have “called up tall recruits behind the shed.” The poem is about a father’s desperate, futile desire to protect his child from pain.
Scannell uses a semantic field of war throughout: the nettles are “green spears,” a “regiment of spite” drawn up in a “fierce parade,” and they come back as “tall recruits.” The father uses a “billhook” (a weapon-like tool) and makes a “funeral pyre” of the cut nettles. This military language transforms a domestic scene into a battle, reflecting Scannell’s war experience. The father fights the nettles like an enemy — but this enemy always returns, just as the threats to a child can never be permanently defeated.
Key structure: The poem is a single stanza of 16 lines of iambic pentameter. It is not blank verse: Scannell rhymes it ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH, so the block hides four quatrains. The single stanza reflects the father’s single-minded determination to protect his son. The final two lines — “Had called up tall recruits behind the shed: / My son would often feel sharp wounds again.” — shift the tone from triumph to resignation: the father knows he cannot always be there.
The final line — “My son would often feel sharp wounds again” — is the poem’s emotional heart. The father realises that no matter how fiercely he fights, he cannot protect his child from every pain life will bring. The nettles are a metaphor for all the hurts a parent cannot prevent.
My Father Would Not Show Us — Ingrid de Kok (1988)
De Kok (born 1951) is a South African poet. The speaker stands over her father’s face, “five days dead.” The title comes from the poem’s refrain, “My father would not show us how to die” — in his illness he hid himself away — and the poem explores what happens when a parent withholds the truth from their children out of a misguided desire to protect them.
Key language: The poem’s most striking feature is its use of negatives: “would not show us how to die,” “He hid, he hid away,” “He turned, he turned away.” These repeated refusals create a sense of frustration and distance. The father’s silence is itself a form of protection — he believes hiding his pain shields his children — but it also creates a barrier between them. De Kok suggests that over-protection can become a form of emotional absence.
The father’s body becomes a map of concealed suffering. De Kok gives us his “inverted face” and the “unfrozen collar of his striped pyjamas” — details the children only reach once he can no longer hide. This connects to ideas about masculinity and stoicism: the father has been taught that showing pain is weakness. The poem critiques this view, suggesting that by hiding his suffering, the father denies his children the chance to comfort him — reversing the usual parent-child dynamic.
Key structure: The poem uses free verse with irregular line lengths, reflecting the halting, uncertain way the speaker remembers and tries to understand the father’s behaviour. There is no comforting rhyme or rhythm — the form mirrors the emotional discomfort of a relationship defined by what was hidden rather than what was shared.
Comparing the Three Poems
Protection as a theme: Baillie’s child tries to protect the grandfather through innocent kindness. Scannell’s father tries to protect his son through physical action (destroying the nettles). De Kok’s father tries to protect his children by hiding his vulnerability. All three attempts fail — the grandfather will die, the nettles will regrow, and the father’s silence creates distance rather than safety.
Form reflects emotion: Baillie’s rhyming couplets create innocent simplicity; Scannell’s steady ABAB rhyme creates determined, measured control; de Kok’s free verse creates uncertainty and emotional fragmentation. In the exam, comparing how form supports meaning across these poems is a strong way to demonstrate AO2 skills.