4 Questions (answered) about the poem 'The Furthest I’ve Travelled' by Leontia Flynn
Includes contrasts, ideas, themes, rhyme and structure, narration etc.
The poem contrasts the narrator’s past and present life. How has it
changed? How does she use the idea of travel to express this?
The poem changes from a life of travelling to different places around the world (e.g. Siberia,
Lithuania – mentioned) to catching up with laundry, and looking through old memories at
the bottom of drawers; it’s expressed through the idea of travel by the way the poet uses
the words ‘alien’ and ‘stowaway’, which are commonly connected to travelling, as well as
phrases such as ‘lead me’ and ‘saddled a rucksack’, suggesting how life took the narrator
anywhere.
Look at Flynn’s use of rhyme and line length in the poem. How does it relate
to the poem’s concerns around freedom and travel?
The poem is free verse, and lacks a strict structure, which could be suggesting the freedom
the narrator gains once starting to travel, particularly shown by the enjambment and the
different length lines; however the caesura and use of masculine rhymes show how the
narrator is still centred around what may be considered ‘home’ (suggested through the lines
regarding the cinema stubs and crushed valentines etc), as these are less spread out,
suggesting that this is symbolic of being closer to the starting point.
Why are the souvenirs she describes at the end of the poem unusual? What
do they suggest about the narrator’s current life?
The items at the end are rather mundane in comparison to the beginning of the poem,
where the tone was filled with more excitement; these souvenirs suggest that the narrator’s
current life was less focused on travelling the world, and was more focused on taking an
emotional journey of self-discovery, involving a cleanse of possessions and looking at
souvenirs from the past.
Do you think the narrator knows more or less about ‘how to live’ by the end
of the poem?
I believe that the narrator knows more about ‘how to live’, because not only has she gone
around the world and experienced different cultures, she also learns about her life and
herself through the souvenirs she collected at the end – the poem shows a journey of
maturity, and with maturity comes knowing and understanding.
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