Why Do You Stay Up So Late? by Don Paterson

Why Do You Stay Up So Late? comes from a question asked of the poet, Don Paterson, by his young son, Russell. In response to the question, he wrote this poem and dedicated it to him.

The poet remembers a day they spent exploring a rockpool and this serves as inspiration for the poem. He remembers his son searching through ordinary pebbles to find more colourful ones to play with, and he compares this memory to finding ideas that spark creativity when he writes poetry.

Each reader will interpret what a poem means to them in their own way. Everyone's response is different. While Why Do You Stay Up So Late? may be a personal response to Paterson's son, the reader can also separate the poet from the words of the poem and think about how they contribute to wider themes or feelings.

This poem contains themes of:

• poetic inspiration
• childhood and memory
• father/son relationship

You can read Why Do You Stay Up So Late? by Don Paterson on the Scottish Poetry Library website.

Why Do You Stay Up So Late? by Don Paterson is 16 lines long, divided into two eight-line stanzas.

It is mainly written in rhyming couplets, and broadly in iambic pentameter. However, in the middle of each stanza, Paterson breaks these patterns which seems to mimic the search for inspiration and finally, finding it again.

The first stanza recounts an experience at the beach, whilst in the second the poet is describing to his son the process he engages in when writing poetry.

Poetry about the act of writing poetry is called metapoetry. It is a long tradition of writing where writers make poems about their own process or about writing poetry more widely. In answering his son's innocent question, Paterson has also had to reflect on his own practice as a writer.

From the beginning of the poem, it is clear that the poem is a response to the question from the title, and this sets the scene for the speaker recalling the day at the beach to provide some context for the young boy. The speaker uses direct address to discuss the shared experience and to help his son understand the creativity he needs to find for his own work.

In stanza two, the poet then connects the experience at the beach to the process he undertakes when writing. The final line of the poem answers the original question and acts as a conclusion, as the poet states:

This is why I stay up through the night.

The father has used the analogy of his son’s experiences at the rockpool to explain his own experiences of writing. Throughout the poem, the use of imagery and sound effects clearly communicate the poet’s key ideas about his own process of writing.

The pronoun “you” is used throughout in the first stanza as the speaker reminds his son of the memory, and then this switches to “I” in the second stanza, to signal the focus is now on the poet and his creative process.

The opening of the poem is direct - addressing Paterson's son Russell (the poem is dedicated 'For Russ') but also the reader, and appearing to answer the question in the title of the poem:

I’ll tell you, if you really want to know.

The setting is the beach, where father and son spent time exploring a rockpool. The repetition of “you” throughout this stanza emphasises how he is trying to get his son to recall these memories with him. “That day you lost” suggests the son could not initially remember the experience, perhaps as he was so young, possibly because it was less special to him than to his father.

The extended use of sibilance carries through this stanza:

• “stones"
• "stolen"
• "shore"
• "something"
• "secret"
• "somewhere"
• "stony sleep"

The sibilance mimics the noise of the waves, making the scene more real and inviting the reader into the memory.

We observe the child as he pretended the stones were precious jewels (“played the jeweller”). This reference to the child’s imagination is effective in connecting with the reader; we can relate to similar childhood memories. This sets up the work of artistic imagination to follow in the second stanza.

Most went dark and nothing more

This is another clear description of what we would see if part of this memory; as the boy dips stones in the water, most just take on a darker appearance. The poet then uses imagery to reveal they occasionally found a more interesting one, which would “blink the secret colour” as the water of the pool washed it clean.

The word "blink" suggests eyes, and combined with "stony sleep" creates an image of these pebbles as containing some hidden life, and being wakened by the boy's play and imagination.

The poet's use of symbolism of the pebbles as jewels and how the child carefully selects the right ones is reiterated in the final line of the stanza “This is how you knew the ones to keep.”

This sets up the analogy between the boy's selection of the stones and the care taken in writing poetry, to come in the second stanza.

Paterson uses the symbolism of the pebbles to represent jewels, as they appear valuable in the child's imagination. This helps him set up the explanation of his own process in the second stanza. Watch this short video about symbolism to learn more.

The new stanza begins with a volta:

So I collect the dull things of the day

This marks a change in focus and we turn to the poet’s creative process when writing poetry. He makes the analogy with the experience of the previous stanza by stating that he “collects the dull things of the day”, in a similar way to how his son collected stones from the beach. The use of “dull” and “dead” links back to the “dark” stones. This suggests he considers a wide range of things to write about, many of which initially seem to lack any promise and many which will eventually be discarded:

but which are dead and which have the surprise/I don't know

The effort he faces when writing are clearly conveyed when he states:

I’ve no pool to help me tell

This makes clear that, at first, he doesn't always know what will work in terms of his writing and what will not. Compared to the boy's definite act of dipping stones in water to see which one's sparkle or shine, the poet has no quick method of selecting the best ideas for a poem.

The repetition of “look” suggests he puts great effort into finding exactly the right ideas for his work, just as the boy carefully selected the most interesting stones. He scrutinises everything until something “makes a mirror in my eyes” by sparking his imagination in some way.

The image of a mirror can be compared to the surface of the rockpool, or to the "secret colour" and sparkle of the jewel-like pebbles. "My eyes" too links back to the stones blinking. The whole phrase could suggest that what the poet sees, and what his job is, is not to create something new, but to reflect the potential in a "dull thing".

Once he has an idea, much like washing the stones with his son to shine them, the poet will “paint it with the tear to make it bright”. Again he compares eyes, which cry as well as see, with the water of the rockpool. The "tear" conveys the arduous and emotional task he undertakes when creating a poem to ensure it is successful. This act of illumination is carried across both the pebbles and the poet's words.

Ending on a perfect rhyme, and echoing the final line of the first stanza ("This is how you knew the ones to keep"), the poet finally answers the question in the title:

This is why I sit up through the night.

The poem is dedicated to one of the poet's sons, and the vividly-painted memory of the opening stanza reflects on a day the father and son spent at the beach together. There, they gathered stones and played with stones in a rockpool. The importance of memory is made clear throughout the poem as the poet then uses this as an analogy to explain his work and to reflect on the precious time they spend together. By explaining his work though the shared memory of this day, the poet allows his son to understand the care and joy he takes in his work.

Using this memory that the son has "lost" as the basis for this poem, could be taken as showing the importance of quite ordinary events that we share, and as an example of finding the "surprise" is something we might otherwise see as dull and take for granted.

The second stanza focuses on answering the question of the title, and it becomes clear that the poet doesn't stay up late because he's reminiscing on days at the beach, but because he sees something similar between his son's actions that day and his own work that keeps him awake.

He doesn't even explicitly say he's writing poetry: this is all done using analogy and metaphor with the pebbles of the opening stanza. But the process is similar - selecting a lot of things that might not work or prove interesting, and instead of washing them off in a pool he has to examine them closely to see which "makes a mirror in my eyes".

The importance of the father and son relationship within the poem is obvious as the reader is able to witness the close bond the poet and his son share. Despite the difficulties in trying to describe his work, the poet takes the time to put his explanation across in a way that he knew his young son would be able to comprehend. He responds to his son’s question and wants to help him understand what keeps him up late at night.

Although the poem is dedicated to Russell, and it can clearly be read as a personal and straightforward response to this question - it is important to think about the themes more widely and about how these relationships are presented in the poem.

The Circle and 11:00 Baldovan can be compared to this poem in terms of childhood and memories. In The Circle the poet describes watching his son painting and struggling with a tremor, which causes him to reflect on the fact that they nearly lost him at birth. His obvious pride in his son is made clear as the poem opens with “My boy”.

In 11:00 Baldovan, the poet describes the young boys’ first experience of travelling on the bus without their parents to highlight this significant moment in their childhood as they take their first steps towards independence.

The close bond between the speaker and his children is made clear in Why Do You Stay Up So Late?, The Circle and Waking with Russell. These all deal with aspects of fatherhood, and emotional responses to being a father and spending time with his sons.

The poet's sons feature in The Swing too, as he builds a swing for them to play on. The symbolic act of building the swing causes him to reflect on a loss of an unborn child, and Paterson reflects on how his memories of, and relationship with, this daughter contrast to his relationship with his boys.

Similarly, in Waking with Russell, the poet reflects on how the birth of his son has altered the course of his life forever.

Both Why Do You Stay Up So Late? and The Circle look at the creative process, with the poet's son facing frustration as he attempts to paint the universe. The difficulty he faces can be seen as similar to the long and challenging work of the poet's own writing process.

Revise Why Do You Stay Up So Late? and other poems by Don Paterson with interactive quizzes for Higher English