Letters from Yorkshire
What it's about
Letters from Yorkshire by Maura Dooley is addressed to someone, a man, who lives in the countryside in Yorkshire and writes to the speaker in the city. She works with words and the news, while he digs his garden and sees the seasons change.
Dooley published it in 1991. The poem doesn't say whether they are lovers, friends or family: it's about a close bond kept alive across distance through letters.
Form and structure
The poem has five , three-line stanzas, in free verse. Enjambment runs between stanzas, like a conversation flowing back and forth.
It moves from describing him in the third person to addressing him directly as you, and ends with the two of them together: the two lives meet.
Key terms
Language
He comes in from the cold to write, ‘his knuckles singing’ as they warm up: a joyful image of his outdoor life.
She insists ‘It's not romance, simply how things are.’ The two lives are contrasted: he sees the seasons, while she is ‘me with my heartful of headlines’, working at a screen. She wonders: ‘Is your life more real because you dig and sow?’
His letters bring her the natural world, ‘pouring air and light into an envelope’. At night, ‘our souls tap out messages across the icy miles’, like Morse code: they stay connected.
Key terms
Themes and comparisons
distance and connection; nature; love between two very different lives.
- : thinking of someone who is far away.
- Mother, any distance: a bond stretched across distance.
- Follower: a man who works the land, seen with admiration.
Exam tip
This poem is in copyright, so it won't be printed unless it's the named poem. Learn a few short quotations.