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Poem of the Month
Simon Armitage
The Lives of the Poets
They rise early, like just after lunchtime.
Their breath on the mirror confirms their existence.
They should rest a while, but today is crunch time
for a rhyme that stands between now and forever,
time to knuckle down to their monkey business.
They sharpen a quill and pause for a breather.
How well they remember those quarantined villagers,
nursing the plague and begging for aid
with pennies dropped into bowls of vinegar,
yet the suffering helps; when things get cosy a
sugary residue coats the tongue,
hence the grinding of peppercorns into Ambrosia.
Late afternoon, and for meaning or moral
they stand at the window and gaze towards yonder,
at the forked oak or a bird in the laurel,
but their compound eyes play tricks by the hundred:
in the clenched fist they notice the rosebud,
in the pretty rose they see Joe Bugner.
They have pinned their hopes on the incidental:
the plums in the fridge are there for the taking,
as is a snow crystal. They offer so little,
expect even less. A plaque on their houses
is ample reward for the years of fiddling,
for the ink stains on their big girls’ blouses,
for shuffling, scratching, occasionally traipsing
up to the post box, for walking behind us
and pulling faces. Mimicking. Aping.
Commissioned by the Poetry Society to mark our Centenary
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Poetry in the news
NOVEMBER
22 Larkin loved his mum and dad (Telegraph)
22 Schiller's 250th (Guardian)
20 Who painted over Waterloo’s best loved work of public art? (Spectator)
20 Keith Waldrop wins National Book Award for Poetry (CBS)
20 Auden and Britten meet at the National Theatre (Wall St Journal)
19 Dyslexic girl wins national poetry prize (Witney Gazette)
18 Andrew Motion to chair 2010 Man Booker Prize (BBC)
14 100 best books of the decade includes Duffy, Imlah, Donaghy, Armitage, Oswald, Logue, Hughes (Collected), and Staying Alive (Times)
14 Maya Angelou interview (Guardian)
14 Blake Morrison reviews A Century of Poetry Review (Guardian)
12 Salt's campaign funds eroded by bad autumn sales
9 Motion: "So what if I copied work? Shakespeare did all the time" (Times)
9 Jo Shapcott: Do women write female poetry? (Guardian)
9 TS Eliot's Margate shelter (Stephen Moss, Guardian)
7 PS members Michael Swan and Jane Tozer placed in Stephen Spender prize (Times)
7 JO Morgan wins Aldeburgh prize (Guardian)
6 Poet and playwright new Welsh Archdruid (BBC)
5 Bright Star 'better than The Piano' (Guardian)
5 Larkin statue to be unveiled (Hull Daily Mail)
5 The wasteland that was TS Eliot's first marriage (Josephine Hart, Standard)
4 Save a great London poetry landmark - The Waterloo installation of Sue Hubbard's poem Eurydice (Chris Hamilton-Emery, Guardian)
4 Stephen King publishes a poem in Playboy (Guardian)
4 'A quite extraordinary affair’: the impetuous life and free-ranging work of Lynette Roberts (TLS)
4 Siegfried Sassoon archive likely to stay in UK after £550,000 award (Guardian)
2 Ben Whishaw interview for Bright Star (Telegraph)
2 When Keats met Vivienne Westwood (Guardian)
1 Letters debunk myth of TS Eliot's cruelty (Times Online)
More Poetry in the News
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