Climbing My Grandfather Family Bonds and Climbing—Comparing Two Poems

Waterhouse is not the only poet who uses the metaphor of climbing in order to write about family bonds. In Simon Armitage's "Mother, Any Distance," the speaker addresses his mother and outlines the distance between them. Just as the speaker in "Climbing My Grandfather" metaphorically climbs his grandfather as he grows older and sifts through his memories, the speaker in "Mother, Any Distance" climbs up the stories in his childhood home and reaches toward a hatch that opens and reveals the sky. The family relationships in these two poems are very different: in "Climbing My Grandfather," the speaker feels love, respect, and intimacy for his grandfather while the speaker in "Mother, Any Distance" feels a confused sense of distance between himself and his mother. However, the act of climbing affords both speakers a sense of freedom.