SR: Lockdown - a poem by UK's poet laureate Simon Armitage

 Hello readers,

 Here I'm going to discuss about poet laureate Simon Armitage's poem 'Lockdown'.

        Poet laureate says society may emerge from the pandemic slightly slower,and wiser, at the other end.

          Simon Armitage has written poem to adress the corona virus and a lockdown that is slowly being implemented across the UK, saying that the art from can be consoling in times of crisis because it " asks us just to focus, and think, and be contemplative."

          The poet laureates new poem Lockdown,moves from the outbreak of bubonic plague in Eyam in the 17th century, when a bale of cloth from Landon brought fleas Carrying the plague to the Derbyshire  village, to the epic poem 'Meghaduta' by the Sanskrit poet Kalidasa.

            Armitage who is at home with his family in west Yorkshire, said that "as the lockdown because more apparent and it felt like the restrictions were closing, the plague in Eyam became more and more resonant" to him.

             His poem references Eyam boundary stone ,which contained holes that the quarantined villagers would put their  money in to pay far provisions from outside, and then fill with vinegar  in the hope it would cleanse the coin. It also touches on the doomed romance between a girl who lived in Eyam and a boy outside the village  who talked to her from a distance, until she stopped coming.

             He thought there was a massage to be learned  " about taking things easy and being patient and trusting the Earth and may be  having come through this slightly slower, and wiser,at the other end - give that one thing that's accelerated the problem is our hectic lives and our proximities and the frantic away we go about things".

                Poetry is " by definition consoling" because " it often asks us just to focus and think and be contemplative", said Armitage.

Lockdown by Simon Armitage:

   And I couldn’t escape the waking dream

of infected fleas 

in the warp and weft of soggy cloth
by the tailor’s hearth

in ye olde Eyam.
Then couldn’t un-see

the Boundary Stone,
that cock-eyed dice with its six dark holes,

thimbles brimming with vinegar wine
purging the plagued coins.

Which brought to mind the sorry story
of Emmott Syddall and Rowland Torre,

star-crossed lovers on either side
of the quarantine line

whose wordless courtship spanned the river
till she came no longer.

But slept again,
and dreamt this time

of the exiled yaksha sending word
to his lost wife on a passing cloud,

a cloud that followed an earthly map
of camel trails and cattle tracks,

streams like necklaces,
fan-tailed peacocks, painted elephants,

embroidered bedspreads
of meadows and hedges,

bamboo forests and snow-hatted peaks,
waterfalls, creeks,

the hieroglyphs of wide-winged cranes
and the glistening lotus flower after rain,

the air
hypnotically see-through, rare,

the journey a ponderous one at times, long and slow
but necessarily so.

 

This Lockdown poem comparison of parul khakhar's poem.

And I couldn’t escape the waking dream
of infected fleas

in the warp and weft of soggy cloth
by the tailor’s hearth

in ye olde Eyam.
Then couldn’t un-see

the Boundary Stone,
that cock-eyed dice with its six dark holes,

thimbles brimming with vinegar wine
purging the plagued coins.

Which brought to mind the sorry story
of Emmott Syddall and Rowland Torre,

star-crossed lovers on either side
of the quarantine line

whose wordless courtship spanned the river
till she came no longer.

But slept again,
and dreamt this time

of the exiled yaksha sending word
to his lost wife on a passing cloud,

a cloud that followed an earthly map
of camel trails and cattle tracks,

streams like necklaces,
fan-tailed peacocks, painted elephants,

embroidered bedspreads
of meadows and hedges,

bamboo forests and snow-hatted peaks,
waterfalls, creeks,

the hieroglyphs of wide-winged cranes
and the glistening lotus flower after rain,

the air
hypnotically see-through, rare,

the journey a ponderous one at times, long and slow
but necessarily so.

And I couldn’t escape the waking dream
of infected fleas

in the warp and weft of soggy cloth
by the tailor’s hearth

in ye olde Eyam.
Then couldn’t un-see

the Boundary Stone,
that cock-eyed dice with its six dark holes,

thimbles brimming with vinegar wine
purging the plagued coins.

Which brought to mind the sorry story
of Emmott Syddall and Rowland Torre,

star-crossed lovers on either side
of the quarantine line

whose wordless courtship spanned the river
till she came no longer.

But slept again,
and dreamt this time

of the exiled yaksha sending word
to his lost wife on a passing cloud,

a cloud that followed an earthly map
of camel trails and cattle tracks,

streams like necklaces,
fan-tailed peacocks, painted elephants,

embroidered bedspreads
of meadows and hedges,

bamboo forests and snow-hatted peaks,
waterfalls, creeks,

the hieroglyphs of wide-winged cranes
and the glistening lotus flower after rain,

the air
hypnotically see-through, rare,

the journey a ponderous one at times, long and slow
but necessarily so.

 

 - 'Lockdown' poems comparison of parul khakhar's poem..

                  

Thank you!