Liz Lochhead and her grandmother knitting

Linda Lochhead is a Scottish writer and a critic; along with this title, she is also well-known for being the powerful and distinctful voice of the female community in Scotland. She is instrumental in making space for women in a male-dominated society. While her poem, For my grandmother knitting, exhibits the use of a female protagonist, it doesn't just stop there; it reaches wider, not just to genders but to age itself. Through the use of techniques such as personification, repetition, sibilance and assonance, this poem touches up on concepts such as old age and the feeling of uselessness.

The first stanza introduces the grandmother and her situation through the use of the alliterative and personified sentence: "there is no need they say but the needles still move". This sentence is repeated often, although rephrased, throughout the poem; the grandmother's rebellion, or, more like, her inability to stop. Her hands still contain the fluid movement she had when she was still the fisher-girl with "sure and skillful hands", so it is not easy to stop something she had grown used to in her past. The use of the description "their rhythms in the workings of your hands" contributes to this, showing how the needles and her hands are as one, in harmonious synchrony therefore it is not easy to just stop, or stay still.

The juxtaposition present in the second stanza does a lot to fuel the imagination of the reader, as they are given a view of contrasting times. "You are old now... Not so good" establishes the beginning of deterioration that comes with old age, especially towards the grasp of things; this is contrasted by the phrase, "but master of your moments then" - through this, the reader is invited into a window of the past, wherein she was sure of herself, of everything that she did. Through assonance in the sentence, "you slit the still-ticking quick silver fish", the image of the young fisher-girl, "deft and swift", remains in the reader's head long after the poem is finished. The brief line, "hard work it was too of necessity" shows that despite the difficulty, it was necessary for survival; additionally, it shows that she regards both knitting and the fishing for survival to be on the same level of necessity - this may be because, now, she almost has no use, in contrast to her in her youth. It may be seen as a necessity because the constant movement of her hands makes her feel useful, or brings her youth, and at this age, feeling useful is her survival.

Through the third stanza, the grandmother's youth is reminisced, with the recurring presence of her hands as the subject, despite changing life roles, as seen through the anaphoric phrase "once the hands of" - her hands, constantly used to support and fend for the lives of six children and a husband out of necessity. She was the helping hand, and this is exemplified in the sibilant phrase, "scrapped and slaved, slapped sometimes" leaving a lasting image in the readers head of the life that she had to experience and the life she lived before she was reduced to just... A grandmother. Once again, the sentence "but now they... Needles move" is added, to contradict and add to the overwhelming feeling of uselessness, in both the third stanza and the fourth.

The fourth stanza shows the distance between the generations, and it is shown how the elderly are treated here. "Gran you do too much" implies that they think she is unable to do the simple task of knitting, although they don't intend to contribute to her sense of uselessness, they don't understand that through the abundance of knitting, she feels like she was contributing, as seen through, "there's no necessity." The following stanzas cover the sheer brutality of aging, in descriptions such as, "painful hands big on shrunken hands" and "swollen jointed. Red. Arthritic. Old." A painful comparison to her hands during youth. The use of the words, "swollen-jointed. Red. Arthritic. Old" may not only be how she sees herself, but how others may see her. Despite this, the needles still move with ease. The contrast seen through the usage of "remembered" as well as "forgotten" reminds the reader that despite the pains of old age and the impending presence of useless, her haves have traces of her vigor; her life was preserved through her hands. In a way, it was as if she refuses to stop, unconsciously. Her hands knew their worth, and so they wouldn't stop, finding their own way to remain in constant motion.

The poem is divided into five stanzas, in which the initial four are written as one long sentence each. The evident lack of any rhyming makes it like a proper story, and the chronological order contributes to this. The poem uses repetition of key phrases and words to push the readers to consider the way they are treating their own elderly loved ones, and although it is in second person, we are able to get insight on the perspectives of the characters, such as the grandmother and the children.