Poem 4: To My Nine- Year- Old Self

Helen Dunmore, “To My Nine-Year-Old Self”

You must forgive me. Don't look so surprised,

perplexed, and eager to be gone,

balancing on your hands or on the tightrope.

You would rather run than walk, rather climb than run

rather leap from a height than anything.  

 

I have spoiled this body we once shared.

Look at the scars, and watch the way I move,

careful of a bad back or a bruised foot.

Do you remember how, three minutes after waking

we'd jump straight out of the ground floor window

into the summer morning?  

 

That dream we had, no doubt it's as fresh in your mind

as the white paper to write it on.

We made a start, but something else came up –

a baby vole, or a bag of sherbet lemons –

and besides, that summer of ambition

created an ice-lolly factory, a wasp trap

and a den by the cesspit.  

 

I'd like to say that we could be friends

but the truth is we have nothing in common

beyond a few shared years. I won't keep you then.

Time to pick rosehips for tuppence a pound,

time to hide down scared lanes

from men in cars after girl-children,  

 

or to lunge out over the water

on a rope that swings from that tree

long buried in housing –

but no, I shan't cloud your morning. God knows

I have fears enough for us both - 

I leave you in an ecstasy of concentration

slowly peeling a ripe scab from your knee

to taste it on your tongue

 

 

 

Key features/themes

By using the form of a dialogue with her childhood self, Dunmore brings the process of growing older into sharp relief. She addresses directly the young girl she once was and, although her younger self doesn’t speak, it is her physical presence which makes the most vivid impression on the reader.

Her vitality and spontaneity are conveyed in a wealth of sensory detail: more than anything the girl lives through her body, a string of active verbs demonstrating her energy and confidence. This contrasts with Dunmore’s characterisation of her adult self and the physical frailties she’s now subject to.

This physical contrast between the two is symbolic of the deeper attitudinal change that Dunmore/the narrator has undergone. The girl’s unthinking eagerness has been replaced by a more fearful, pessimistic frame of mind which Dunmore is concerned will ‘cloud’ the young girl’s summer morning. However, the poem ends with a brilliant image of absorption in the world of the body and sensation which suggests that, even if this imagined dialogue could take place, the child would not be able to understand the adult’s perspective.

The shifting pronouns in the poem chart this sense of division between the child and the adult she will become. The unifying ‘we’ keeps breaking down into ‘I’ and ‘you’, culminating in the statement in the last stanza: ‘I leave you.’ It’s impossible, the poem’s ending suggests, for the two realities to co-exist – time inevitably cuts us off from our younger selves, even when, as in Dunmore’s case, we can re-create the past briefly, poignantly, through language.

 

Links to other poems

The poem in the anthology which most obviously connects to Dunmore’s in its concerns is Julia Copus’ ‘An Easy Passage’. Looking at Burnside’s evocation of childhood in ‘History’ could also be interesting, as both writers use sensory impression to re-create the child’s absorption in the physical world.

 

Further resources

Dunmore’s author page at Bloodaxe gives some critical feedback on her most recent poetry collection, and also a video of her reading two of her best-known poems: www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852249404  

Her own website has an extended biography written in the first person, plus extracts from her books: www.helendunmore.com/index.asp  

Many of the articles on Dunmore online focus as much on her fiction as her poetry. The connections between the two and her creative process are touched on in this article from The Independent: www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/helen-dunmore-a-poet-in-need-of-her-space-776576.html