At its core, Vernon Scannell's "Nettles" is a poem about the trials and tribulations of being a parent. Primarily, it is a poem about the way that parents protect their children throughout their lives in different ways. The poem is told from the perspective of a father who watches his three-year-old son fall into a bed of nettles, injuring himself. The father swears to his son that he will never allow the nettles, or anything else, to ever harm him again. And the father takes active steps to prevent his son from ever feeling that kind of pain again. Naturally, though, the father fails. Despite the father's best efforts, the son "would often feel sharp wounds again."
"Nettles" was first published in 1993 as a part of Collected Poems 1950-1993 by Vernon Scannell. Scannell, whose career spanned more than five decades, published the aforementioned collection as a way to make his work more accessible. The collection, which includes all of Scannell's work from the specified time period, did just that. In their review of the collection, The Sunday Telegraph wrote that "'Scannell is one of what appears to be a vanishing breed, a poet of technical accomplishment who understands that poetry, like the other arts, is a craft as well.'"
