Consider the role of family relationships in Long Distance and The Sick Equation
‘Long Distance’, a poem written by Tony Harrison, is all about a family unable to communicate. This situation has arisen because the mother in the family has died. ... ‘The Sick Equation’, by Brian Patten, is from his 1996 collection ‘Armada’ and is semi-autobiographical. The first stanza is all about his unhappy childhood and, like ‘Long Distance’, is written from the child’s perspective. The ‘Sick Equation’ that Patten refers to is the premise ‘that one and one made two’. ... This gave him the idea that marriages never worked and so, like in ‘Long Distance’, he became disconnected from love, just as his parents became disconnected from each other. ... The language and some of the rhymes that Tony Harrison uses in his poem (‘Long Distance’), for example ‘just popped out’, are meant to suggest that the people he is describing are very ordinary and, because of the accent needed to make ‘gas’ and ‘pass’ rhyme, from the North of England.