Mark Haddon is an author who is not only famous for his poetry but for his novels too. To most people’s surprise he did not always have his profession as an author, he had several careers many of them small but one that stuck out was his job as an assistant to those with multiple sclerosis and autism. After that though he started to write novels. He mostly focused on child books that he would write and illustrate also he would write lines for child’s tv shows then he went on to write one of his first and favorite novels The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. After this he went on to write more books and even poetry, like “Trees”. In this poem Haddon uses imagery and personification to demonstrate that nature is valuable and worthy of noticing, even in the smallest details.
Hadden uses constant imagery that put’s the reader in the moment where happiness is exposed, and peacefulness is displayed. The way that these lines if peacefulness are shown is through the text images for example, “wake at your aunts’ cottage… coal train on the empty hill… above the little gardens.” The small things like aunts’ cottage, empty hill and little gardens are all things that the reader can imagine being in the moment and have that feeling of carelessness and the thought to just be happy, because when there is nothing but one’s self and peace and quiet its relaxing. This is just what the author is trying to put forward. Next Haddon continues to show this when he mentions other things like “your skill at the clarinet, you’re reading poetry.” While these few sentences may seem insignificant show the things that would bring someone to a happy place because they are actions that can just be unbothered.
Throughout the poem Mark Haddon personifies lots of things in life that most people look over, but they are nice things that should be admired. In this poem personification is used to frame the important moments for example, “fish changing direction in the air that swims.” The way that Haddon describes the wind is important because when he says the air is swimming it does not mean that the air is taking a dip into a pool it means that the air is almost exploring and with that the reader can paint a picture toward the theme of what is really meant by nature. Next Haddon also remarks later in the paragraph, “as the oaks roar in the wind off the channel.” What is meant by the oaks roaring is not that they are magical creatures that roar like lions, but it gives you that picture of nature that is needed to complete the puzzle. Even with the small things like the air swimming it shows that even a trip outside absorbing small details can lead to bigger things like trees screaming in the wind.
Finally, to drive the point home the theme expressed by Haddon connects the real world with the authors use of imagery and personification to prove things that people want in their lives. And this is the whole goal of this poem, it’s to get people into an imagination of their happy place when they are reading this poem, and when Haddon puts in sounds and place’s that people can relate to. And lots of people in the real world get stressed at work and are fed up with others and this poem gets away from that with a theme of really taking in what nature has to offer because if people where to do that more than maybe we would see happier people.