Poetry and Exhaustion

I recently wrote an article for The Redbrick, the student newspaper at the University of Birmingham, which talked about how poetry is received nowadays. This includes thoughts from Simon Armitage who read from  his new book Walking Home  at an event organised by Birmingham's Book Festival.

The resilience of poetry in the modern world is an exhausted topic, but it won’t go away regardless of how many times it’s discussed. It could be thought that examining its role gives it vitality; if it’s being debated then it surely still exists in our conscience and has an important part to play in life. When Michael Gove announced last June that he intended to introduce the recital of poetry for children in primary school on the national curriculum it seemed like an attempt to resuscitate an interest in poetry by indoctrinating people at a young age. However this treatment doesn’t do poetry any favours. Not because suggesting that its popularity is wavering is an acknowledgement of it as an ebbing art form, but because the perception of poetry as a rival to X-factor or iPhones is a fallacy. It’s much healthier to see poetry as something that runs parallel to all of this; something which adapts to the present day and remains significant to those who seek it. This perception was put to the test recently by poet Simon Armitage who in his most recent book, Walking Home, stretched the lengths of its value. Travelling as a modern troubadour along the 256-mile Pennine Way, he relied on his poetry as currency, replacing Pound Sterling with verse.

Starting in Kirk Yetholm on the Scottish border, traditionally the end of the route, Armitage gave poetry readings in village halls and church function rooms in return for board and lodging as he made his way to the Derbyshire village of Edale via his home in Marsden, Yorkshire. After each of these readings a sock was passed around as a receptacle for donations, allowing each person to give their own personal valuation. At the end of 19 days, with 18 readings conducted, Armitage accumulated a gross profit of £3,086.42. At a simple glance this quantifiable figure may be enough to say that ‘yes, poetry still remains an important concept amongst people.’ So much so that someone is able to earn (according to Armitage’s sums) £1.11 above minimum wage, which is even more impressive when one considers this was done in villages with relatively small populations. However greater testimony to the undwindling appreciation of poetry can be seen amongst those who travelled with Armitage on his route. Most of them there were strangers who endeavoured the challenging terrain and temperamental weather simply for the chance to accompany one of the country’s most popular contemporary poets.

Speaking last Friday at an event put on by Birmingham’s Book Festival at Adrian Boult Hall, Armitage stated the journey made him feel that his chosen art form had been validated. ‘I’ve always wanted to appeal to anybody and everybody with my poems. Whether that’s somebody who is studying literary criticism with a scalpel or whether that’s somebody picking up a book of poems for the first time. It is an impossible ambition, but a worthy one I think, and in that respect I felt that there was still an appetite out there for somebody saying things in, what I hope is, a memorable way.’

Armitage’s desire to appeal to anybody and everybody is admirable, as is his acknowledgement that not everybody will be drawn to it. It’s treating poetry not as an essential part of life, but something that is readily available. It can be seen in his own experience with poetry; he wasn’t entrenched amongst literature all his life, he studied geography at university and then went on to work as a probation officer. His passion for language and poetry was helped by being exposed to it at school, but its growth was organic, rather than it being forced upon him. ‘I started being interested in poetry when I was about 14 or 15 at school and we started reading Ted Hughes’ work. Up to that point I was asleep, I thought the world wasn’t a very interesting place. Those Hughes poems woke me up, and they woke me up to language and the power of language.’

The other night I asked him what his thoughts were on Gove’s plans and how he thinks poetry should be administered within the education system. ‘I think it’s good to be exposed to good things at school, that’s how I got in to poetry. But my feeling is you need to find or to be shown the poems which are meaningful or exciting to them and my worry about what Michael Gove was saying is that we’ll all be forced to recite ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. If it’s about giving people the access to forms of language which they understand, which excites them, or gets their imaginations going and is meaningful to them in some way rather than completely alienating and putting them off poetry forever, then I’m completely in favour of it.’

Armitage has recently been involved with a project called ‘Stanza Stones’ which saw the placement of stones engraved with his poetry throughout rural Yorkshire. The depth of the engraving on these particular stones means that they’ll remain there for at least a 1,000 years. This innovative display of public art acts as the perfect metaphor for poetry. It will always be there, it is there to be read just as the Pennine Way is there to be walked. However it must be approached, rather than forced upon people, otherwise it’s an unwelcomed challenge.

Simon Armitage's Walking Home
Faber & Faber
£16.99

@ConsolationLit