Simon Armitage and the Craft of Poetry

Each year during National Poetry Month, I have tried to write at least one column about poetry. This year circumstances prevented that column from appearing in April, so I have decided to extend the month-long celebration for several more weeks in order to continue my personal tradition. This time around I want to focus on Simon Armitage, a highly regarded poet in England – the land of poets – but not as widely known here in America.

The following poem comes from Armitage’s collection with the same title published originally in 1992 by Faber & Faber and reissued by the same publisher in 2010.

Kid

Batman, big shot, when you gave the order

to grow up, then let me loose to wander

leeward, freely through the wild blue yonder

as you liked to say, or ditched me, rather,

in the gutter …well, I turned the corner.

Now I’ve scotched that “he was like a father

to me” rumour, sacked it, blown the cover

on that “he was like an elder brother”

story, let the cat out on that caper

with the married woman, how you took her

downtown on expenses in the motor.

Holy robin-redbreast-nest-egg-shocker!

Holy roll-me-over-in-the-clover,

I’m not playing ball boy any longer

Batman, now I’ve doffed that off-the-shoulder

Sherwood-Forest-green and scarlet number

for a pair of jeans and crew-neck jumper;

now I’m taller, harder, stronger, older.

Batman, it makes a marvelous picture:

you without a shadow, stewing over

chicken giblets in the pressure cooker,

next to nothing in the walk-in larder,

punching the palm of your hand all winter,

you baby, now I’m the real boy wonder.

I think you will agree that this a fun poem: the language is a delight and while elements of the poem are almost playful, the theme of outgrowing one’s childhood heroes and finding one’s own place in the world gives the poem deeper meaning.

I want to take it one step further, though, because I happen to believe that this is a great poem because of the craftsmanship that went into its composition.

We need to start with some history and some linguistics. Armitage’s most significant achievement in this country came in 2007 when he published a new alliterative translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a poem originally written in approximately 1400 and considered a masterpiece of Middle English poetry.

Prior to the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066, the dominant form of poetry in England was alliterative. The language of the time was dominated by the Saxon influence, which was filled with words that had the stress on the first syllable of words. So the repetition of a consonant (or consonants) at the beginning of words gave poems their rhythm.

After the Norman Conquest, the French language began to have the larger influence and that language is filled with words that have the stress on the second (or last) syllable. This French influence gave rise to the forms of poetry we are most familiar with: poems that rhyme.

For reasons that no one is sure of, alliterative poetry was resurrected for a time in the late 14th through the mid-15th centuries, and it is during this resurgence that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written.

Armitage’s alliteration translation of this seminal work actually made it onto several bestseller lists when it was printed, but most importantly, his careful study of alliterative poetry and tradition influenced his own work.

Now go back and look at the poem again. It takes the form of an alliterative dramatic monologue, where Robin characterizes Batman as someone he has now outgrown, someone who is aging and becoming feeble. But notice, too, the structure of the poem: each line contains 10 syllables and – because it is alliterative, with the stress on the first syllable – the meter is trochaic pentameter.

The repetition of sounds flows throughout the poem, within individual lines and from one line to the next – sometimes at the beginning of words and sometimes within the words (“I’m not playing ball boy and longer/Batman, now I’ve doffed that off-the-shoulder” – “doffed” and “off”; the beginning “B’s”; the “D’s” in “doffed” and “shoulder”; and the visual “O’s.” And notice, too, that each line ends with the guttural “-er” sound.

In his introduction to his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Armitage wrote, “But to me, alliteration is the warp and weft of the poem, without which it is just so many fine threads. In some very elemental way, the story and the sense of the poem is directly located within its sound.”

Hopefully, this gives you at least a glimmer of the craft Armitage brought to what otherwise may seem a very simple poem. This – in my opinion – separates someone who writes poetry from someone who is truly a poet.