Genetics by Sinead Morrissey explores the influence of DNA and family relationships on our sense of identity. Through the symbolism of her hands, the speaker conveys the impact of her parents’ relationship, which not only gave her existence but also shaped her formative years.
This study guide is written for students and teachers of English Literature, particularly those studying CCEA’s GCSE English Literature Identity Anthology and Pearson Edexcel’s Conflict Anthology. For more study guides from these anthologies, check out the list of poems in the series at the bottom of this guide.
Genetics
My father’s in my fingers, but my mother’s in my palms.
I lift them up and look at them with pleasure –
I know my parents made me by my hands.
They may have been repelled to separate lands,
to separate hemispheres, may sleep with other lovers,
but in me they touch where fingers link to palms.
With nothing left of their togetherness but friends
who quarry for their image by a river,
at least I know their marriage by my hands.
I shape a chapel where a steeple stands.
And when I turn it over,
my father’s by my fingers, my mother’s by my palms
demure before a priest reciting psalms.
My body is their marriage register.
I re-enact their wedding with my hands.
So take me with you, take up the skin’s demands
for mirroring in bodies of the future.
I’ll bequeath my fingers, if you bequeath your palms.
We know our parents make us by our hands.
What is 'Genetics' all about?
Summary
The speaker in the poem opens up about their immediate family and the bonds and divisions that form their family identity. We cannot be sure if this poem is autobiographical, so for our purposes, we will simply refer to the speaker rather than the poet.
The poem explores the relationship between the generations, focusing on the relationship between parents who are no longer together. The speaker’s parents’ relationship has ended and they live in different parts of the world. Yet, in their child, their relationship lives on.
The speaker visualises this relationship by looking at her palm prints and fingers. Indeed, she plays with all these ideas by shaping her interlocking fingers into the shape of a chapel. This chapel image echoes a childhood song so well known there is a WikiHow page to help you get it right!
At the end of the poem, Morrissey switches her focus from the past to the future. She indicates that she and her partner will pass their genetics on to their future children, continuing the pattern of passing on genetics and mirroring of yourself in the next generation.
Context of 'Genetics'
Sinead Morrissey's life, education and career
Born in Northern Ireland in 1972, Morrissey grew up in Portadown until she was six, and then Belfast. Her studies took her to Dublin, and life took her to Japan, New Zealand and back to Belfast again.
Life in Northern Ireland
The 1970s and 80s were a time of civil unrest in Northern Ireland, referred to as The Troubles. Children who grew up in these decades were familiar with, whether directly or through reporting each day on the news, bomb scares, explosions and the presence of the British Army. News reported missing people, revenge crimes, paramilitary activity and much more which had a marked impact on the citizens of Northern Ireland.
The two largest communities in the North were very deeply divided and most citizens were on one side or the other. Morrissey explains that her father, born a Catholic, and her mother, an English woman with a background in the Church of England, had no strong religious ties, giving her a freedom from the bitter disputes and divides experienced by so many at the time.
Morrissey moved to Dublin to study when she finished school, completing her BA and PhD at Trinity College.
In 1990, Morrissey won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award when she was only 18 years old, making her the prize’s youngest winner.
After her studies, Morrissey moved to Japan, where she married and lived for two years, and then moved to New Zealand. Her travels and life outside Northern Ireland contribute to the richness of her poetry.
Morrissey moved back to Belfast in 1999 to take up the post of writer-in-residence, before becoming Reader in Creative Writing at Queens’ University, Belfast.
In 2017, Morrissey, her husband and two children, moved to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne where she is now Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle.
Reference: many ideas here are shaped by this article in the Belfast Telegraph, which explores Morrissey’s influences in detail, and is definitely worth a read.
Line-by-line analysis
Stanza 1
My father’s in my fingers, but my mother’s in my palms.
- Parallelism emphasises the distinct yet connected inheritance from each parent.
- The comma forms a pivot for the line, helping to create a balance and structure to the line.
I lift them up and look at them with pleasure –
- The imagery of the hands is the focus on the line, with the speaker taking joy and comfort from the image of the union of parents.
I know my parents made me by my hands.
- The metaphor of hands as a symbol of creation and an embodiment of the parents’ union is established here and continues throughout the poem.
Stanza 2
They may have been repelled to separate lands,
- The strong, negative verb ‘repelled’ suggests a forceful separation, highlighting the emotional distance, and possibly also an unpleasantness in the separation.
to separate hemispheres, may sleep with other lovers,
- Listing here emphasises the extent of the separation, both geographically and emotionally.
but in me they touch where fingers link to palms.
- Juxtaposition is highlighted by the connective ‘but’ to contrast the physical separation with the lasting connection symbolised in the speaker’s hands.
Stanza 3
With nothing left of their togetherness but friends
- The enjambment after ‘friends’ allows this line to run straight into the next.
- The negative phrase ‘nothing left’ emphasises the speaker’s melancholic tone.
who quarry for their image by a river,
- This line contains a metaphor which compares searching or digging (‘quarry’) for your image or identity to the murky or indistinct reflection of yourself that you see in the water of a river. The effect is to say to the reader that, despite the lack of relationship and union of her parents, the speaker can still see the positive outcome of their marriage in herself.
at least I know their marriage by my hands.
- This stanza ends by returning to the repeated image of her hands as a symbol of their marriage. In the next stanza, this image becomes more developed.
Stanza 4
I shape a chapel where a steeple stands.
- This metaphor of her hands transformed into a sacred space further emphasises the enduring bond of marriage.
- The themes of childhood and of the church are brought to the fore here in the symbol of the church made by her hands. The childhood rhyme is explained here.
And when I turn it over,
- Enjambment creates a sense of anticipation before revealing the repetition of the final line of the stanza, which the reader has already heard in stanzas 1 and 2.
my father’s by my fingers, my mother’s by my palms
- Repetition echoes the first line, reinforcing the undeniable and constant connection. By leaving and then returning again, the weaving of inheritance in different generations is hinted at. The structure of repetitions mirrors the content of genetic inheritance.
Stanza 5
demure before a priest reciting psalms.
- Personification is used here to give the hands human qualities, creating a sense of solemnity and ceremony.
- The language of the church is used again here with ‘priest reciting psalms’.
My body is their marriage register.
- Metaphor is used to show the body becoming a physical record of their past relationship.
I re-enact their wedding with my hands.
- The metaphor is extended here as her hands take on the role of the parents, further emphasising their symbolic union in the speaker.
Stanza 6
So take me with you, take up the skin’s demands
- Enjambment creates a flowing and persuasive tone as the speaker extends the invitation to a silent listener, most likely the speaker’s current partner.
- The final stanza has a slightly different structure (quatrain rather than terset), as is expected in a villanelle. To emphasise this change, there is also a slight shift in tone as the speaker moves from past relationships into this present one, and considers a future one too, in the form of children (‘bodies of the future’). These combinations of repeats along with shifts and changes from stanza to stanza remind us that future generations are neither entirely different nor complete carbon copies of previous generations.
- The image of the ‘skin’s demands’ continues the body imagery, and uses personification to make the skin a metaphor for an adult who wants to have children.
for mirroring in bodies of the future.
- ‘Bodies’ here are a metaphor for vessels, continuing the genetic cycle of inheritance.
I’ll bequeath my fingers, if you bequeath your palms.
- The conditional statement emphasises the reciprocal nature of creating a family and the importance of a shared legacy. Both parties are needed to create a new generation.
We know our parents make us by our hands.
- The poem finishes with a final repetition of the image of hands as a metaphor for union. Not only are our hands joined in marriage, but they also hold the wedding ring, they identify us to police with our fingerprints and they are believed by some to tell our future through palm reading… in so many ways, our hands tell the story of our lives, and the image has been explored thoroughly in ‘Genetics’.
Analysis of form and structure
Villanelle
Morrissey has said recently that form is a significant factor in her writing. In the Belfast Telegraph article linked here, Morrissey says:
“I’m really interested in poetic form. The poems [from her On Balance award winning collection] are all very different from each other in terms of their formal structures and formal characteristics and I’m playing a lot with line and white space and gaps, so how the poems are laid out is really important.”
From this Belfast Telegraph article, published Sat 23 Sep 2017 at 08:59
A Villanelle is a French form of poetry which has a very tight and unique structure. It is made up of five three-line stanzas (called tersets) and a final four-line stanza (called a quatrain).
Within this verse structure, repeated lines (refrains) are used to intensify the message and emotion of the poem. In the image below, I have tried to illustrate this clearly. You can see that two key ideas/lines are repeated. I have shown these in green and red. The two important lines vary slightly, but in this poem, the key words ‘palms’ and ‘hands’ are repeated from lines one and three in verse one as the closing line of alternate verses until the last verse. In the last verse, the two repeated lines form a closing couplet, making the final stanza one line longer than the previous five.
The Villanelle follows a complex structure. As with a sonnet, we see that the strict rules can allow more opportunity for intensity and emotion. Morrissey’s persistent repetition of the palms and hands imagery lodges that picture very firmly in the reader’s mind.
For further reading, Dylan Thomas’ famous Villanelle written at his father’s death, embodies the form beautifully. There is emotional power in the repeated refrain, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage against the dying of the light’. Read the full poem here.
Verse structure
‘Genetics’ is composed of six verses. The first five verses are tercets (three-line verses) and the final verse is a quatrain (a four-line verse).
Rhyme
The image above also shows visually the rhyme scheme of the poem. Morrissey follows the tradition of the Villanelle to rhyme the first lines of each stanza, highlighted in pink, as well as the second lines in each stanza, highlighted in yellow. This creates the rhyme scheme ABA which repeats in every stanza until the final one, which is ABAA.
This small range of sounds adds to the intensity of the repetition. Indeed, the choice of only two sounds (the ‘A’ sound and the ‘B’ sound) perhaps reflects the meaning of the poem: all of our DNA is inherited from one of two sources: parent ‘A’ and parent ‘B’. The new child is a reflection and a repetition and an echo of the previous generation. The image above shows the double helix strands of DNA – two lines that join and spiral together. This is the image Morrissey draws on from the Villanelle – two repeated lines, joining and spiralling together.
The rhymes, however, are imperfect. There is a childlike imperfection in the rhyming of ‘demands’ with ‘palms’, for example, which is largely carried by the assonance. Again, analysing this we could suggest that while our DNA is inherited, it forms something new. The new is certainly a reflection of the original, but not an exact carbon copy. Changes, ‘imperfections’, are created, which Morrissey hints at through these imperfect rhymes. Perfectly imperfect, you could say.
Rhythm
While ‘Genetics’ lacks a set meter, it makes use of internal rhyme within the lines, enhancing its musicality and the sound patterns on each line.
Additionally, the short three-line stanzas contribute to the rhythm of the poem, with regular pauses between the stanzas adding fluency to the whole.
Language analysis
Palms and hands
Palms and hands are the most significant images in the poem ‘Genetics’. Their importance in the poem is shown in the repetition, as discussed above.
Several phrases spring to mind when we consider our palms and hands. Firstly, to know someone ‘like the back of our hand’ is to know them well, in detail. Thoroughly. To say, ‘my mother’s in my palms’ perhaps suggests the deep knowing and detailed bond of time and love that is shared between the two.
Another idea which is suggested by the imagery of the palm is that of palmistry. Palm readers look at the lines and intersections of the palms to interpret the life of the person, which is a practice that has its roots in ancient Indian culture. The imagery here suggests that the whole life of a person including major life events is written into the palm. In this way, the palm is a much more significant story of genetics, inheritance and of your life.
In holding one hand up to examine it, the speaker is reminded of the joining of hands in the marriage ceremony. As a result, this brings to mind the church, steeple and witnesses all present to watch two separate people become one in marriage.
Fingers
Our fingers also play an important part of the story of our identity. Finger prints, unique markings to identity one person from another, are used by police and governments to identify us.
The speaker is comforted by the ever-present reminder of her lineagein the markings on her fingers and palms which act as reminders of her parents. They may not be together as a couple any more, but they are together in her memories and in the joining of her fingers and palms.
Themes in 'Genetics'
Separation
The imagery of division is created in stanza two. “… repelled to separate lands,
to separate hemispheres…” creates a picture of the physical distance between the speaker’s parents.
There is physical distance between the speaker’s parents but there is also emotional distance.
‘With nothing left of their togetherness but friends
who quarry for their image by a river’.
This image of searching for a reflection, a vague and fragile reflection, rather than looking straight at the original image, leaves the reader feeling lost. This child of divorce finds comfort in her own hands, remembering the marriage that was, and thinking of what remains of their relationship in her.
Inheritance
The poem explores how our bodies carry the physical and potentially emotional traces of our parents. The speaker’s physical features act as a permanent reminder of their parents’ past relationship, even after their separation.
Hope for the future
Despite the poem reflecting on a past relationship, it also shifts towards a hopeful future. The speaker expresses a desire to create a new family, suggesting that while the past cannot be changed, the future holds the potential for creating new legacies and connections. Rather than being put off marriage, the speaker wants to create a new generation with her partner.
Quiz
Quiz on ‘Genetics’ by Sinead Morrissey
Test your knowledge of the poem 'Genetics' by Sinead Morrissey.
Comprehension Questions
- How does the poem’s title add meaning to the poem as a whole?
- What specific physical features does the speaker inherit from each parent?
- What image does the speaker create using their hands in the third stanza?
- What does the speaker claim their body is in relation to their parents’ relationship?
- What does the speaker want in the final stanza?
- How does the form of the villanelle contribute to the emotion of the poem?
- What is the main idea the speaker conveys in the final line of the poem?
- Identify an example of a simile used in the poem and explain its effect.
- Explain how the repetitive rhyme scheme contributes to the overall meaning of the poem.
- What poem from your anthology would you select to compare and contrast with ‘Genetics’? Plan out an essay focusing on how these two poems are similar, and how they are different.
Poems from the CCEA Identity Anthology to pair with 'Genetics':
You could consider the pairing of ‘Genetics’ with D.H. Lawrence’s ‘Piano’ which draws on the power of memories in your identity. Both poems discuss relationships with one or both parents in shaping their present state. Both poems express this familial love through imagery: one uses the visual imagery of the hands while the other uses the auditory imagery of music.
‘Genetics’ by Sinead Morrissey goes well with Gillian Clarke’s ‘Catrin’. Both poems focus on family relationships, with a sense of the change and separation that comes about over time and growth. The poems use very different forms, so there is plenty for students to explore and contrast.
Both ‘Genetics’ and ‘Kid’ explore themes of identity shaped by family. ‘Genetics’ focuses on physical inheritance – the speaker’s hands mirroring their parents’. Despite their parents’ separation, these physical links remain. ‘Kid’ explores a more psychological inheritance – the speaker grappling with the shadow of a powerful figure. Both poems utilise form – ‘Genetics’ with its strict villanelle structure and ‘Kid’ with a narrative arc – to explore the complexities of identity and family influence.
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