Key Quote
“"I discover the point of his knee, dusty and cracked as a dropped biscuit"”
Andrew Waterhouse · Climbing My Grandfather
Focus: “dusty and cracked”
The grandfather's body is explored like a landscape — his knee is 'dusty and cracked' like parched earth. The simile 'dropped biscuit' adds domestic warmth and tenderness: he is both a mountain to be scaled and a familiar, comforting presence.
Technique 1 — SUSTAINED EXTENDED METAPHOR — BODY AS MOUNTAIN
The entire poem is one sustained extended metaphor: the grandfather's body is a mountain to be climbed. Waterhouse maps anatomical features onto geographical ones — the knee is a 'point', the skin is 'smooth and firm' like rock, the face is a 'summit'. This conceit (extended, unlikely comparison) transforms an act of physical intimacy (a child climbing on a grandparent) into an act of exploration — the grandfather is a world to be discovered.
The metaphor works because it captures the child's perspective: to a small child, a grandfather IS enormous, and climbing onto his lap truly does feel like scaling a mountain. Waterhouse preserves the logic of childhood perception while simultaneously making it poetic. The reader sees the grandfather through the child's eyes — vast, ancient, awe-inspiring — and recognises this as a form of love.
Key Words
RAD — PROGRESS
The poem charts a physical progression from the grandfather's feet to his face — a journey upward that mirrors the child's growing understanding of who this person is. Each new body part reveals more of the grandfather's character: the 'dusty' knee suggests outdoor work, the 'earth under his fingernails' suggests gardening or farming. By the time the child reaches the summit (the grandfather's face), a complete portrait has been assembled through accumulated detail.
Key Words
Technique 2 — TACTILE IMAGERY — TOUCH AS KNOWLEDGE
Waterhouse privileges touch over all other senses: 'feeling', 'scraping', 'resting', 'place my feet', 'push' — the poem is entirely tactile (relating to touch). This is how small children learn: not through sight or hearing but through physical contact. Touch becomes a form of knowledge: each texture, temperature, and surface tells the child something about the grandfather's life and character.
The absence of dialogue is significant — the grandfather never speaks and the child never asks questions. Communication happens entirely through physical proximity (being close). Waterhouse suggests that the deepest forms of understanding between generations are not verbal but bodily — the child learns who the grandfather is not from stories but from the feel of his skin, the earth under his nails, the warmth of his chest.
Key Words
Context (AO3)
WATERHOUSE'S LIFE & DEATH
Andrew Waterhouse (1958–2001) won the New Writing Ventures Award for his first collection and was praised for his vivid natural imagery. Tragically, he took his own life shortly after the collection was published. This biographical context gives the poem — especially its celebration of family connection and physical tenderness — a poignant (deeply moving, especially in light of loss) resonance. The grandfather's body as a stable, enduring landscape gains additional meaning when we know the poet's own life was cut short.
INTERGENERATIONAL BONDS
The poem celebrates the intergenerational (between different generations) bond between grandchild and grandparent. Unlike the parent-child relationship (often fraught with authority and rebellion), the grandparent-grandchild bond is often characterised by pure affection, patience, and undemanding love. Waterhouse captures this: the grandfather does not instruct or command but simply exists as a presence to be explored.
Key Words
WOW — EMBODIED COGNITION — THE BODY AS ARCHIVE
The poem can be read through the lens of embodied cognition — the philosophical and psychological theory that knowledge is not purely mental but is stored and experienced through the body. The grandfather's body is an archive (a repository of stored information) — his cracked knee records a life of kneeling and working; the earth under his nails records decades of gardening; his skin texture records the passage of time. The child 'reads' this archive through touch, gaining knowledge that words cannot convey. This connects to philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of intercorporeality — the idea that our understanding of other people is fundamentally bodily, not mental. We know others not through what they say but through their physical presence: their warmth, their smell, the texture of their skin. Waterhouse's poem is a masterpiece of intercorporeal knowledge — the child discovers the grandfather's entire history through the landscape of his body, and in doing so, discovers what it means to love someone completely.
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