The Sealey Challenge - Simon Armitage

 

I had to double check myself re an idea I had about SimonArmitage’s Book of Matches (Faber & Faber 1993). So I Googled, andyes, I had remembered it correctly. The 30 fourteen-line poems/sonnets in thefirst section are each, supposedly, meant to be read in the time it takes for amatch to burn. I guess the clue is in the opening stanza of the first poem:

“My party piece:
I strike, then from the moment when the matchstick
conjures up its light, to when the brightness moves
beyond its means, and dies, I say the story
of my life —”

Well, you just have to, don’t you?! My first match burntout after a few lines and I realised the draft from my writing room door thatopens onto the garden was to blame. My second attempt, different poem, had asecond or two to spare. My third one had me squealing and blowing it out as theflame licked at my fingertips a couple of lines before the end.

But gimmicks apart, I like the poems in this collection.I like Armitage’s command of form and language, of rhythm and rhyme, and hownone of those ever dominate the poems, only contribute to their music. What hehas to say always transcends the engineering work. I feel he understands thatthe audience matters. He’s a poet that cares about his readers. The work can beboth playful and serious. Serious but not solemn.

And if I hadn’t liked the collection of my own accord, Iwould have made myself like it after reading about poet Ruth Padel’sunfavourable review in which she said that praise for the book had come frommainly non-poets. Because that’s brownie points for me. The mainstream poetryworld can be, in my experience, unpleasantly incestuous, with poets so oftenwriting for and reading to other poets. To reach a non-poet audience seems likean admirable achievement.

I lost track of his work as Poet Laureate, maybe becausehis appointment in 2019 was so quickly followed by the Covid years andsubsequent life events that took my full attention. But I want to read more ofhim now. Especially some of the poems mentioned in his Wiki bio: poems aboutthe 1969 moon landing, those commissioned by the Institute of Cancer Researchand the Royal Astronomical Society, about mental health, the Antarctic, the100th anniversary of the burial of the Unknown Warrior, lives lost to Covid, incelebration of national parks and open spaces, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.So many. So diverse. 

I went running with my ladies’ running group yesterdaymorning and as we crossed a field at the foot of the North Downs I picked up apiece of flint, one of thousands that were scattered across the fields mixed inwith the sandy clay.

So I’ve picked Armitage’s poem, ‘On the Trail of the OldWays’ to share with you, as he mentions flint, and because I had such a strongfeeling of gratitude for the landscape yesterday, how lucky I was to be able torun through it, and partly along The Pilgrim’s Way. A literal trail of the oldways.

 

(I’ve also added a ‘Matchstick’ poem for you to have funwith fire, if you want to 🔥)