Liz Lochhead (Scottish Highers English): Revision Notes
The Spaces Between
Overview
"The Spaces Between" is an observational poem written by Liz Lochhead in April 2020, during the first coronavirus lockdown in the United Kingdom. The poem draws connections between a contemporary family celebration and ancient human artistic expression, exploring themes of separation, connection, and the human need to leave lasting marks.
The poem moves between three distinct settings. It opens with a family birthday celebration in a garden, where a young boy's tenth birthday is being marked whilst his grandmother watches from behind a window. The poem then shifts dramatically backwards in time, describing prehistoric cave painters who created handprints on cave walls by blowing pigment around their splayed fingers. Finally, the poem returns to the present-day birthday scene, where the lockdown context is revealed and the grandmother's emotional struggle becomes apparent.
Through this structure, Lochhead suggests that despite the vast distances of time, geography, and circumstance that separate human beings, the fundamental desire for connection and the impulse to be remembered remain constant across all generations.
Context: the coronavirus pandemic
Understanding the historical context is essential for appreciating this poem's emotional impact. Lochhead composed the work in April 2020, during an unprecedented period of social isolation.
The coronavirus (COVID-19) began spreading globally in late 2019, originating in China before reaching pandemic status. By March 2020, worldwide deaths exceeded 10,000, prompting governments to implement emergency measures. The United Kingdom entered a nationwide lockdown on 23 March 2020, fundamentally restricting normal social interaction.
Under lockdown regulations, people from different households could not meet indoors or outdoors. Movement outside the home was limited to essential purposes:
- Shopping for necessities
- One daily exercise session
- Medical needs or caring for vulnerable people
- Essential work that could not be conducted from home
Educational institutions closed except for vulnerable children and those with key worker parents. Public spaces including libraries, playgrounds, gyms, and places of worship shut their doors.
These restrictions meant that families were separated for extended periods. Milestone celebrations such as birthdays, weddings, and funerals could not proceed normally. The pandemic created a particular poignancy around intergenerational relationships, as elderly relatives were among the most vulnerable to serious illness. The image of a grandmother watching her family celebrate through a window captures the painful reality many families experienced during this period.
Form and structure
The poem comprises 33 lines organised into four stanzas of irregular length. Lochhead employs free verse, with no regular rhyme scheme or metrical pattern, allowing the content to dictate the poem's rhythm and creating a conversational, observational tone appropriate to the subject matter.
The structural movement through the poem creates its meaning. The first stanza establishes the domestic scene, introducing the family celebration and the grandmother's physical separation. The second stanza shifts dramatically to prehistoric times, describing cave art created over forty thousand years ago. The third stanza returns to the birthday party, explicitly revealing the lockdown context and the emotional strain beneath the celebratory surface. The brief final stanza pulls these elements together, reflecting on what endures beyond physical separation and the passage of time.
This structure creates a juxtaposition between the personal and the universal, between the immediate present and deep history. By placing a modern family moment alongside ancient artistic expression, Lochhead suggests that certain human impulses transcend temporal boundaries. The desire for connection, the need to communicate across barriers, and the drive to leave evidence of our existence unite contemporary people with their prehistoric ancestors.
The irregular stanza lengths reflect the poem's shifting focus and emotional register. The opening stanza establishes the scene with moderate length, whilst the second stanza expands to accommodate the detailed description of ancient art-making. The third stanza's length allows space for the emotional revelation of the grandmother's hidden distress. The final, shortest stanza provides a concentrated reflection that encapsulates the poem's central message.
Stanza one: the birthday celebration
The poem opens with an apparently ordinary domestic scene. A family has gathered in a garden to celebrate a young boy's tenth birthday. The description immediately establishes a sense of creativity and makeshift celebration through the image of a "rainbow crayoned big and bright/on a roll of old wallpaper." This homemade banner suggests both resourcefulness and deliberate effort to create joy despite circumstances.
The rainbow carries particular symbolic weight within the pandemic context. Throughout lockdown periods, rainbow images became widespread symbols of hope and community solidarity, often displayed in windows to boost morale. The fact that this rainbow is "crayoned" links forward to the poem's later exploration of pigment and artistic mark-making, establishing a thread that connects childlike creativity with ancient artistic impulse.
Lochhead uses vivid, specific details to bring the scene alive. The boy's father is described as "big-eyed, mock-solemn," and he "pantomimes ceremony" as he prepares to light the birthday candles. The word choice "pantomimes" is particularly expressive, functioning here as a verb to convey exaggerated gesture and performance. The father is not merely performing the ritual but amplifying it, making it theatrical to enhance the occasion.
However, the tone shifts when the reader discovers that the grandmother is "Inside her living-room," separated from the celebration. She watches through a window rather than participating directly. This revelation transforms our understanding of the scene. The exaggerated gestures and careful staging now appear as compensation for physical distance, attempts to bridge the gap created by enforced separation.
Analysing Connection Through Imagery:
The stanza culminates in a tender image of connection despite barrier. The grandmother and her grandson mirror each other's actions through the windowpane, "stretching fingers/and they smile and smile."
- The repetition of "smile" emphasises their determination to maintain emotional connection
- The phrase "as if they touched/warm flesh not cold glass" uses contrast to powerful effect
- "warm flesh" versus "cold glass" encapsulates the gap between desired contact and actual separation
- The glass window becomes a powerful symbol of enforced distance
Stanza two: ancient handprints
The poem makes a dramatic temporal shift, leaping backwards "More than forty thousand years ago" to prehistoric times. This transition is abrupt, creating a striking juxtaposition with the contemporary birthday scene. Lochhead describes how ancient people "splayed their fingers thus/and put their hands to bare rock," immediately connecting this gesture to the hand pressed against the window in the previous stanza.
The description of the art-making process is detailed and physical. The prehistoric artists "chewed ochre, red-ochre, gritted charcoal" to create pigments. These verbs emphasise the bodily effort and primitive methods involved. The repetition of "ochre" and the list structure create a sense of the laborious preparation required. The connection back to the first stanza is reinforced through the echo of "crayoned," linking children's creative expression with humanity's earliest art.
Lochhead then describes the act of creating the handprint stencils with particular emphasis on breath and exertion. The artists "blew,/blew with projectile effort that really took it out of them." The line break and repetition of "blew" emphasises the physical strain of this action. The phrase "projectile effort" suggests forceful, determined action, whilst "really took it out of them" grounds the description in familiar, colloquial language that makes the ancient people feel immediate and relatable.
The emphasis on breath carries multiple layers of meaning. Breath represents life force, the most basic indicator of living existence. The phrase "their living breath" draws attention to this connection between breath and life.
Within the pandemic context, this takes on additional resonance, as COVID-19 frequently caused respiratory problems, making breath itself a contested, vulnerable aspect of existence. The repeated mention of breathing reminds readers that the simple act of drawing breath connects all humans across time.
The stanza describes how the pigment "spattered the living stencil/that was each's own living hand." The repetition of "living" emphasises the artists' determination to create these marks whilst alive, to ensure evidence of their existence would remain after death. The handprint works as both presence and absence. The coloured outline shows where the hand once was, creating an image defined by empty space, by what is not there. This paradox reinforces the poem's title and central theme: the spaces between things can be as meaningful as the things themselves.
Lochhead acknowledges the gap in understanding between contemporary viewers and ancient artists: "We do not know why they did it/and maybe they did not either." The use of "We" and "they" establishes perspective, positioning the reader alongside the speaker in attempting to comprehend prehistoric motivation.
However, the poem suggests that conscious understanding is unnecessary: "they knew they must". This statement proposes an instinctive, primal drive to create, to communicate, and to leave traces that transcend rational explanation.
The description employs hard, textured language throughout. Words like "bare," "gritted," "raw," and "cold" emphasise the harsh conditions these artists faced, yet they persevered in their creative act. This determination to "make their mark" despite difficulty parallels the contemporary family's determination to celebrate the birthday despite lockdown restrictions. Both groups face challenging circumstances but maintain their rituals and connections.
Stanza three: lockdown revealed
The poem returns to the present-day garden scene, where the birthday boy displays his newly acquired skill: "The birthday boy is juggling." This simple statement grounds us back in the immediate moment after the prehistoric excursion. However, the word "lockdown" now explicitly identifies the historical moment, anchoring the poem firmly in the specific reality of the pandemic.
The grandmother continues to perform for her family, just as they perform for her. She "dumb-shows most extravagant applause" and "toasts them all in tea." The phrase "dumb-shows" indicates silent, exaggerated gesture, echoing the earlier use of "pantomimes" to describe the father's actions. Everyone in this scene is acting, amplifying their expressions and gestures to overcome the barrier of separation. The grandmother's "extravagant applause" suggests overcompensation, a deliberate excess meant to convey what she cannot express through direct contact.
Analysing Performed Emotion:
The description "miming hunger, miming prayer/for her hunger to be sated" reveals the emotional reality beneath the cheerful performance.
- The repetition of "miming" reinforces that these are performed gestures rather than spontaneous actions
- The "hunger" she references is not literal but metaphorical, representing her deep need for physical closeness
- The religious language of "prayer" elevates this need to something profound and desperate
- The wish for her hunger to be "sated" suggests a craving that remains unfulfilled
The stanza's emotional climax arrives with "blinking tears", which explicitly conveys her inner distress. This brief phrase cuts through the performance and pretence, revealing the genuine pain of separation. The grandmother has been working to shield her grandchildren from her sadness, maintaining a cheerful facade, but her tears expose the cost of this enforced distance.
The stanza concludes with another image of hands at the window: "Another matched high-five at her window." This gesture recalls both the opening image of the grandmother and grandson mirroring each other's stretched fingers and the cave handprints from the second stanza. The high-five is a modern gesture of celebration and connection, but here it remains incomplete, the hands separated by glass. The word "matched" emphasises the attempt at symmetry and connection, whilst the physical barrier remains unmistakable.
Stanza four: reflection and conclusion
The brief final stanza synthesises the poem's themes and images. Lochhead returns to the motif of breath and blowing: "Neither the blown candles or the blown kisses." The repetition of "blown" creates a thread connecting the birthday candles, the affectionate gesture of blown kisses, and the prehistoric artists who "blew" pigment around their hands. This linguistic link suggests that all these acts of blowing represent human attempts to project presence, emotion, and identity across space.
The speaker states that these actions will not "leave any permanent mark." This assertion seems to contradict the enduring cave art described earlier. However, the rhetorical question that follows complicates this statement: "unless love does?" This question proposes that whilst physical marks may fade, emotional connections and memories might endure in ways that transcend material permanence.
The final lines emphasise the uniqueness and fleetingness of this particular moment: "on this the only afternoon/ they will be all alive together on just this day the boy is ten."
This statement carries both celebration and sadness. It honours the present moment whilst acknowledging that time is constantly passing, that the family members will never again occupy exactly this configuration of ages and circumstances. The phrase "all alive together" takes on particular weight given both the pandemic context, where mortality became more immediately present in public consciousness, and the comparison with prehistoric artists who are now long dead.
The poem ends by acknowledging mortality whilst affirming the value of connection and memory. The family will not always be together; individual members will age and eventually die. However, this moment, this celebration, this connection across the glass barrier—these experiences create something that persists, if not as physical mark then as emotional reality.
Human connection
The theme of human connection forms the poem's emotional and philosophical centre. Lochhead explores how people strive to maintain bonds despite physical barriers, temporal distance, and the ultimate separation of death.
The image of palms pressed against glass recurs throughout the poem, functioning as a symbol of attempted touch, of reaching across barriers. The grandmother and grandson mirror each other's hand positions through the window, creating symmetry despite separation. This gesture connects directly to the cave handprints, where ancient people also used their palms to create lasting images. In both cases, the hand represents individual identity and the human desire to connect with others.
The juxtaposition between the lockdown birthday and prehistoric cave art suggests that certain impulses are fundamental to human nature regardless of historical era. The speaker notes that "We do not know why they did it/and maybe they did not either," yet "they knew they must."
This suggestion of instinctive drive applies equally to the modern family's determination to celebrate the birthday despite restrictions. Both the ancient artists and the contemporary family are compelled by forces deeper than conscious choice to reach out, to mark occasions, to affirm their existence and connections to others.
The poem presents connection as something that can persist across vast distances. The cave paintings created over forty thousand years ago still communicate across time, allowing contemporary viewers to recognise shared humanity with their prehistoric ancestors. Similarly, love and memory can bridge the "cold glass" that separates the grandmother from her family, creating emotional connection despite physical barrier.
Touch emerges as particularly important. The repeated emphasis on hands, palms, fingers, and the desire to feel "warm flesh not cold glass" highlights the human need for physical contact.
During the pandemic, this need became especially acute as touch itself became potentially dangerous, requiring distance and separation for safety. The poem mourns this loss whilst celebrating the creative ways people found to maintain connection despite constraints.
Time and memory
The poem explores how humans exist within time, marking its passage whilst attempting to create something that endures beyond individual lifetimes. The birthday celebration itself is a ritual that marks time's passage—the boy turning ten, growing older, moving through life stages. The presence of three generations (grandmother, parents, children) within the scene emphasises the continuous flow of time, with each generation connected to those before and after.
The dramatic temporal shift to "More than forty thousand years ago" creates perspective on human existence. From this vantage point, the differences between eras diminish, and similarities in human behaviour become more apparent. Ancient people and modern people face different specific circumstances but share fundamental needs and impulses. Both create art, celebrate important moments, and seek ways to be remembered.
Memory functions as a form of permanence within impermanence. The birthday celebration creates memories for the family even though "Neither the blown candles or the blown kisses" will "leave any permanent mark" in physical terms. However, the rhetorical question "unless love does?" suggests that emotional experiences and relationships create their own form of lasting mark, inscribed in memory rather than material.
The poem acknowledges mortality explicitly in its final lines: "on this the only afternoon/ they will be all alive together on just this day the boy is ten."
The phrase "only afternoon" emphasises uniqueness and irretrievability. This specific configuration of people at these specific ages in these specific circumstances will never occur again. Time moves forward inexorably, and human life is finite. Yet the poem does not present this reality as purely tragic. Instead, it suggests that awareness of time's passage and life's limits makes present moments more precious.
The act of creating the poem itself represents an attempt to capture and preserve this moment, to create a lasting mark through language. Just as the cave painters left handprints and the family creates memories, Lochhead creates a literary record that extends the moment beyond its original occurrence.
Connections with other Lochhead poems
"The Spaces Between" shares thematic concerns with several other poems in Lochhead's collection, particularly regarding memory, family relationships, and how objects and rituals preserve the past.
"Sorting Through" presents a speaker examining her deceased mother's possessions. Each item evokes specific memories and reveals different aspects of the mother's identity. Both poems explore how material objects and experiences connect us to people across time, and how the act of remembering keeps relationships alive even after death. The sensory, physical details in both poems ground abstract emotions in concrete reality.
"Box Room" examines how spaces and objects preserve versions of people frozen in time. The lover's childhood bedroom, maintained by his mother, contains his younger self. This creates tension between past and present identities, and between different generations' claims on the same person. Similarly, "The Spaces Between" explores how different generations relate to each other, with the grandmother watching the younger family members whilst remembering her own past.
"For my Grandmother Knitting" depicts a grandmother whose traditional skills no longer seem relevant to younger family members, creating a different form of separation and disconnection.
Whilst "The Spaces Between" shows a grandmother separated by external circumstances (lockdown), "For my Grandmother Knitting" shows internal disconnection caused by changing values and interests. Both poems explore intergenerational relationships and the grandmother's perspective.
"Last Supper" and "My Rival's House" also engage with ritual and ceremony, though in more negative contexts. "Last Supper" presents a meal shared among friends that becomes an occasion for destructive gossip and schadenfreude. "My Rival's House" describes a ritualistic tea-drinking scene fraught with tension and passive aggression. These poems share with "The Spaces Between" an interest in how ceremonial actions and shared meals function in human relationships, though they explore darker possibilities than the birthday celebration's attempted joy.
All these poems demonstrate Lochhead's consistent interest in how people connect across differences, how memory shapes present experience, and how apparently simple moments contain complex emotional realities.
Key Points to Remember:
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"The Spaces Between" was written during the first COVID-19 lockdown in April 2020, capturing a specific historical moment when families were forcibly separated.
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The poem juxtaposes three distinct settings—a modern birthday party, prehistoric cave art, and a final reflection—to suggest that human needs for connection transcend time and circumstance.
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Key symbols include hands pressed against barriers (window glass and cave walls), breath and blowing (connecting life, artistic creation, and celebration), and the glass window (representing separation but also attempted connection).
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The poem explores how humans create marks and memories to transcend physical barriers and mortality. The rhetorical question "unless love does?" suggests that emotional bonds create their own form of permanence.
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Lochhead uses structural contrasts and specific poetic techniques (juxtaposition, enjambment, repetition) to emphasise her themes. Everyone in the poem "performs" or exaggerates their gestures to communicate across distance, revealing both resilience and the pain of separation.