Lockdown
English poet and novelist Simon Armitage has been awarded the Queen’s gold medal for poetry for his body of work “giving voice to those rarely admitted into poetry, and extending an arm around the unheard and the dispossessed”. The award, which was created by King George V in 1933 at the suggestion of the then poet laureate, John Masefield, is decided by a committee headed by the laureate – currently Carol Ann Duffy, in her final year in the role.
Summing up the committee’s decision, Duffy praised Armitage as “boundary-breaking”, spinning “poems of emotional weight and musical grace from the fabric of our everyday lives”.
Simon Armitage has written a poem to a prevailing situation of Lockdown and Corona virus that is slowly being implemented across the UK. The story is beautifully weaved. It takes us to Eyam in the East and captures the beauty of the West. Here, the poem is talking about the two different dreams he had and that both dreams show that there was the same time which prevailed in the past and the people of society have gone through the hard times which we are going through in this Corona Pandemic. Both the dreams recollects the beautiful love- story in which one couple is separated by the Plague Pandemic and in the other a man is exiled by the king for neglecting his duties and a husband and wife are separated.
Alongwith, we see here an attempt by Simon Armitage to bring the feeling of togetherness by portraying the two different far ends, pointing the story of East and West together in the poem. Revealing the truth that the whole world is the same in the eyes of nature or God, the same situation prevails throughout the lands. All men are caged, nature is not separated by borders as the humans have separated the land. “the journey a ponderous one at times, long and slow but necessarily so.” This is the last line of the poem which says that the journey, the journey of the pandemic period or also we can say the journey of the poem is clumsy, long and slow but it is necessary, the pandemic journey has brought us to real sense and real world. We get so busy in our hectic schedule that we don’t even spare time for the heath. But this pandemic has just placed a temporary full stop to stop looking around, spare time with loved ones and to see how our nation is facing this difficult time. The situation was not same for all some were enjoying their time with family and some were longing for shelter, walking thousands of mile to their beloved once but as Simon Armitage said - “long and slow but necessary 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.
Here is the first half of the poem which exhibits the first dream of the Poet. The poet wakes with a dream of infected fleas, infected fleas were the cause of Plague pandemic which emerged from the rats. To portray the situation the dreadful Plague poet refers to the small English village Eyam. Villages were separated by the ‘boundary stone’ the stone was placed between villages as a boundary no people were allowed to cross that boundary stone in order to reduce contagious plague infection.they placed a vessel filled with Vinegar and while selling or sharing of things that placed the coins in vinegar. They used vinegar as we use the sanitizer today to clean and uninfect the products.
Also the story of star crossed lovers Emmott Syddall and Rowland Torre. A story of heartbreak concerning Emmott Sydell and Rowland Torre, separated from one another when the village of Eyam quarantined itself during an outbreak of the Plague, They both used to meet. The lovers would arrange to meet secretly but at a distance minimizing any risk of Rowland catching the disease. But suddenly Emmott stopped appearing to Rowland yet Rowland visited the place regularly with the hope of meeting. After the safe time was announced Rowland was the first one to re-enter Eyam but found that Emmott died in the plague. In the church of Eyam the glass paintings are present displaying this love story.
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.
It is the second half of the poem. In the first half the poet describes the plague situation and the Love story related to the East area. Now the poet carries further the poet with talking about the West region or area. Here poet refers to the sanskrit poem of the one of the greatest sanskrit poets ‘kalidas’ meghdoot’. Yaksha, who had been banished by his master to a remote region for a year, asked a cloud to send a message of love to his wife. The port beautifully depicts the Eyam of Plague time and here he is considerably depicting the beauty of the West, the cloud which followed through the earthly maps. Cloud passed through the camel traits, cattle tracks, and stream of necklaces, looking at fan- tailed peacocks and painted elephants. Here the poet reveals the beauty of the West, Further talking about the geographical area of the West. Connecting beautifully the East and West in the same poem, the poet ends with saying that yes the journey is clumsy, slow and long but it's necessary.
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