Reflections on the puddle of life

Last week I went to a poetry reading. I haven't been to one for a long time, not since the Library closed, and I felt it was about time. Or, more to the point, I felt it was the right poet.

Simon Armitage.

Simon Armitage is a Huddersfield born poet, probably the best poet writing in Britain right now, and he was launching his new collection Seeing Stars at the Chetham's School of Music in Manchester. It's something of an austere setting. Sited in the middle of busy city centre Manchester, Chetham's is a medieval jewel in Manchester's crown. The building dates to 1421, and the school to 1653 and you can tell. The Library at Chet's is the oldest surviving free public library in UK and it's pretty sexy. You can read more about it here: Chetham's library

The reading itself took place in the stone walled, oak and iron work clad Baronial Hall. As I settled in my red, plush velvet chair with my complementary glass of red wine listening to the burble of dignified conversation swishing around me I couldn't help thinking that the setting was somewhat odd for the street-wise, common man-of-the-people Armitage. He's the kind of writer who would seem more at home reading from the graffiti tattoed balcony of an inner city slum. Another thing that struck me was the wide demographic of attendees. Old to young, black to white, goth to toff, to me - the one time would-be-poet - everyone waiting patiently to listen to the words of the quiet, unassuming looking man sitting patiently behind a gargantuan oak table flicking through a somewhat gaudy turquoise covered book.

So what of Armitage himself? Sporting a fringe, of all things, discreet earring, and with a distinct hint of never having progressed past The Smiths he's not exactly what you'd expect. But that's the power of Armitage. Nothing is ever quite what you expect.

The same is true of his poetry. The collection he was promoting that day is an odd affair. Written during the period in which he was translating a new version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Armitage said he wrote these poems as a reaction to, or perhaps as an antidote to the formality of the form, rhythm and diction he encountered during the translation process. He said he wanted to write poetry without form, without restrictions, without poetry, and this raises that age old, interesting question: what is poetry? Armitage replies that it is poetry because he says it is. I guess it's up to the reader to decide if they agree with him.

As he read, his eyes focused above the crowd, in his best poetry reading voice at first I wasn't convinced. The collection is a series of monologues from wide and varied characters; sperm whale to British astronaut to a man who picks up Dennis Bergkampf (for those not in the know, he's a Dutch football player) whose been abandoned on the side of the motorway. They read like monologues. I found myself wondering where, or if, there would be any poetry.

And then he struck. Vintage Armitage. Because one of his great powers as a poet is that he is funny. Yes funny. Dry, deadpan, ironic funny. He started his reading with a poem called The Christening, a poem told from the point of view of a sperm whale. At first it seemed oppressively factual but then the customary Armitage wit rises to the surface:

My song, available on audio cassette and compact disc...

I am attracted to the policies of the Green Party...

Customers who bought books about me also
bought Do Whales Have Belly Buttons? by Melvin Berger
and street maps of Cardiff . .

and this is what Armitage does, the bittersweet, the laugh-out-loud funny that leads you to the cry-out-loud sad. The most powerful piece he read during the evening was a poem called I'll Be There to Love and Comfort You which starts off in his usual tone:

The couple next door were testing the structural fabric / of the house with their difference of opinion...

before dragging you in an unexpected direction. A fist comes through the wall. Hearing a cry for help emerging from through the wall, 'it's her' his partner says. The speaker reaches in:

"And out of the void, slowly but slowly it
came: the pulsing starfish of a child's hand, swimming
and swimming and coming to settle on my upturned
palm.

Not what I expected.

Is it poetry? I don't know, but it is good. If you haven't encountered him, I'd recommend giving Simon Armitage a go though perhaps, to begin with, try one of his earlier collections like Kid or Tyrannosaurus Rex meets the Corderoy Kid which comply more easily with the common reader's definition of what poetry is. To give you a bit of a taster (copyright, Mr Armitage of course) here are a couple of poems (okay, three ) from Kid. Try before you buy. Enjoy.

Fire

We could not see it from the cemetary
but now, on the bottom road, there is smoke.
Pull up; let's stumble over this rough ground
and look on it: the extent, the damage.

Women: this evening they are in our hair.
We rub our eyes and see them. Friend, I heard
you stood two ironing boards top to toe
so it wouldn't get boring. What went wrong?
Betty lost her baby so she dug out

her eye. The blood. Let's back off. Like bluebells
let's nod or shake just as the breeze blows: yes,
they seem to have it under control; no,
from the cemetary we could not see it.

Poem

And if it snowed and snow covered the drive
he took a spade and tossed it to one side.
And always tucked his daughter up at night.
And slippered her the one time that she lied.

And every week he tipped up half his wage.
And what he didn't spend each week he saved.
And praised his wife for every meal she made.
And once, for laughing, punched her in the face.

And for his mum he hired a private nurse.
And every Sunday taxied her to church.
And he blubbed when she went from bad to worse.
And twice he lifted ten quid from her purse.

Here's how they rated him when they looked back:
sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that.

In Our Tenth Year

This book, this page, this harebell laid to rest
between these sheets, these leaves, if pressed still bleeds
a watercolour of the way we were.

Those years: the fuss of such and such a day
that disagreement and its final word,
your inventory of names and dates and times,
my infantries of tall, dark, handsome lies.

A decade on, now we astound ourselves;
still two, still twinned but doubled now with love
and for a single night apart, alone,
how sure we are, each of the other half.

This harebell holds its own. Let's give it now
in air, with light, the chance to fade, to fold.
Here, take it from my hand. Now, let it go.