Abstract
True north is a poem written by Simon Armitage and published in the book Kid. Kid is a collection of poems published in 1992. Simon Armitage is a famous British poet, playwright and novelist born in 1963 in Marsden, in Northern England. The North is a central theme in Simon Armitage's work. For that matter, he published a memoir in 2009 entitled All Point North. In the poem "True North", Simon Armitage deals with how going away from home can change who you are. To do so, he tells the story of the first time he came back from his school in Portsmouth, in the south of England. The poem deals with the speaker struggling to find his identity and figuring out where he belongs after having been at Polytechnic school. Indeed, the speaker returns home, ready to tell his university education, and against all odds, realizes that nobody really cares about him.
So as to analyze this poem, we will first try to explain how the poem describes the speaker as a young man who has a high opinion of himself. Then, we will put the emphasis on the actual situation, which is that he has to be himself to be accepted by his community. Finally, we will try to comment on the consciousness raising of the speaker, when he realizes where he truly belongs.
