This one is again about literature. The Poet Laureate has written a poem. It isn’t very good.
You know, perhaps, the Mrs Armitage books? By Quentin Blake, former illustrator of Roald Dahl, who turned to illustrating his own stories. Well, there is a Mr Armitage too. Simon. Simple Simon. He is the Poet Laureate. I am not sure what the qualifications are to be poet laureate, but I think that perhaps, next time, the Private Eye Pseudo-William-McGonagall impersonator should apply. For Mr Armitage appears to have not the slightest grasp of what poetry is. Whereas McGonagall did.
This is poetry, written for the present occasion by yours truly, briskly, and I mean briskly (all of the below written in my university café as I eat breakfast before teaching a class at 9.30am):
The Zoological Society
With predictable propriety
Asked Mr Armitage
The Poet Laureate, to gauge
Whether he could write
A poem about the zoo at night
Mr Armitage froze –
And instead wrote prose.
Now, that, my friends, is doggerel of a recognisable 20th-century whimsical sort, with no particular attention paid to rhythm, assuming that it will come along naturally, given the regular snare drum of the rhyme. In fact, it is rap. Better is something highly worked, something from Auden, Keats or Shakespeare, but for those of us who do not breathe poetry it is quite hard to write rhythmically.
Intensely gazed the owlish laureate
Upon the rock-like bored chameleon
And hoped the damnéd ‘
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There is a molehill far away
It caused a nasty fall
The injured fellow could have died
A warning to us all
What council help? They only sell
They do not seem to care
But we believe that was for us
‘Tis surely most unfair
There were no others close enough
To help their nearest kin
The council just prevaricate
But really want his skin
Oh, dearly, dearly has he loved!
And we must love him too
The council clearly want his blood
He really ought to sue
A young girl who was hopeless at tennis
At swimming was truly a menace
When asked how she came
To be top of her game
She said ‘I was a streetwalker in Venice’.
You should read the stuff that passes for poetry every week in The Spectator!
No thanks. Why? Do you?
I’m sad to read this rubbish from Mr Armitage. At GCSE I boycotted the grim set works of Carol Ann Duffy and analysed his poems instead, a relief so great he’s always held a fond place in my heart. Some of his writing is really thought-provoking, and his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is full of alliteration and is much more attractive than the one I read as a child.
I’ve just got it. [Slapping head.]
He is so annoyed at having to write a stupid poem for London Zoo because he is the Poet Laureate that he decided to take the piss.
Its a dry joke boys and girls and none of us got it including James Alexander
Sorry James you need to revive your sense of humour.
Simon Armitage has really got one over on you.
Pompous, self-conscious drivel (not you, James).
He’s never been to the zoo at night. Clearly not a ‘method’ poet. No method and seemingly not much of a poet.
The animals are tucked up in bed.
Poetic licence can’t save this:
“dabs its ointment on the gibbon’s paw,
nitpicks its way through the troop of gorillas,
smooths the silverback’s fur.
…..
puts a crystalline glint in the tiger’s eye,
makes a zebra flicker like old film,
shushes the two-toed sloth when it stirs.“
God that’s awful. Rather like a satirical sonnet of mine from a Creative writing class some decades ago:
I bring you now these words in my conceit,
That they will please you, and perhaps seduce.
With perfect meter but no sixteen feet,
My hidden meanings you may here deduce.
No money motive, I’m not here to sell,
Although I hope you’d find me a good buy.
A verse of love is all I have to tell,
But is it for a girl or for a guy,
Or is it meant for all the waiting crowd ?
So I recite with trembling and fear
I’m nervous when I read my work aloud
A critic speaks out now, I thrill to hear
“It rhymes and scans” (then condescending swipe)
“But at its heart it’s trivial and tripe”
Eskimo Nell anyone?
As a published poet (in competitions in”The Oldie”) I usually write with rhyme and metre, but not always. There is verse in limericks, Elegiac couplets, sonnets etc but there can be poetry in language, though whether you can call prose laid out in verse like lines poetry I find difficult. My own attempts at blank verse tend to be rather pompous too. That said, try Don Marquis’s “Archy and Mehitabel”.
Pastiche can be fun. Likewise clerihews. My shortest was for the King’s first marriage:
Wales
Nails
Di.
Sigh!
His Gawayne translation was excellent.
I think he got BBCed…
I don’t understand poetry.
Maybe it’s meant to create an image, like The Jabberwocky or Ozymandias, but Armitage’s poem just doesn’t do anything for me
A lot of poetry passes me by
Try Philip Larkin – definitely poetry, but almost always immediately comprehensible (and not less poetic because of it).
Hear the words I sing,
War’s a horrid thing.
So I sing, sing, sing,
Ding-a-ling-a-ling.
The German Guns go
Boom, boom, boom, boom,
Boom, boom, boom,
Boom, boom. Boom, boom,
Boom, boom, boom.
Pvt. Baldrick 1883 – 1917
When the night is dark
And the dogs go bark
When the sky is black
And the ducks go quack
When the sky is blue
And the cows go moooo
Think of lovely Queenie
She’ll be thinking of you.
Hooray for Professor Alexander!
Simon Armitage has been a great poet laureate. I’ve been to a few of his poetry readings in Grasmere, watched his band LYR play and read a number of his books such as All Points North.
I’m certainly not going to judge his output based on a single poem about animals at night where he has no control over the subject because he has been commissioned to write it, and then write about it in one of the most pompous articles I’ve ever read on here.
Poetry can be highly subjective so I can understand Simon Armitage may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But personally I find his storytelling is incredible. He has a great talent for expressing his ideas and many of his poems have a lot of empathy, humour and a down to earth feel about them. I’m sure I would disagree with some of his views but he isn’t overly preachy.
Some of his documentaries have been incredible. The Pendle Witch Child was a brilliant piece of storytelling. And Drinking for England where a series of drinkers (alcoholics, a lunchtime drinker who drives home over the limit, binge session drinkers etc) described their connections to drink… Read more »
Well, judging Simon Armitage from this offering I am not impressed. Whatever this collection of words is it is not poetry, it is not even decent prose and James Alexander is correct that it is hard work after a few lines; a piece of writing not worth spending any time with.
Dire.
The problem, as you have identified, is in judging from this single offering, and extrapolating to ‘why can’t the poet laureate write poetry’. I’m not a football fan but its like taking a single Eric Haaland goalscoring miss, perhaps one I could have scored myself, and writing an article ‘why can’t Eric Haaland score goals?’
But it’s true that SA missed?
Armitage has in fact scored.
Its a joke.
What he was saying, quite rightly is that this poem is dire.
Armitage may or may not be much of a poet – certainly on the evidenve of this piece of crap, he isn’t.
You are perfectly entitled to form the view he isn’t a good poet based on a single poem carefully selected to show the poet in the worst possible light. And I will base my view on a knowledge of a large bulk of Simon Armitage’s work.
Not very celebratory (for a 200th birthday) is it? I asked ChatGPT to come up with one int he style of John Betjeman, the last poet laureate who would be capable of such a thing, but that too was rather gloomy. So I asked for something more celebratory, the final verse of which was:
‘Oh happy zoo! oh London Day!
where parrots flash like bits of sun,
and double-deckers roll away
beyond the lawns where otters run’
It has something of Byron’s “The Isles of Greece,” doesn’t it
Eee, that’s reet good.
I was going to suggest that modern poets certainly know what poetry is:
“Poetry is where each line begins wi’ a capital letter.”
But I see it doesn’t in this case.
Whilst not prose, some limericks are worthy of note. A favourite being;
There once was a lady from Bude
Who went for a swim in the lake.
A man in a punt
Stuck a pole in her ear
and said “you can’t swim here, it’s private.”
Have a good weekend.
😀😀
Another nonsense limerick which has remained with me over many years is:
There once was a man from Dundee
Who was stung on the nose by a wasp
When asked if it hurt,
he said “no not at all,
it can do it again if it likes.”
There was a young girl from Madras
Who had a most beautiful ass
Not rounded and pink
As you probably think
It was grey, had long ears, and ate grass.
A poem about poetry…
There once was a man of Japan
Whose poems would never quite scan.
When asked what’s the cause
He replied without pause:
It’s because I always try to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can.
😂😂😂
😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆
There I sat broken hearted , paid a penny but only farted 😉 ( sh1t house poets society )
..so the next time I took a chance, saved a penny but S___ my pants!
Here I sit feeling artful, paid a penny, and laid a cartful.