Not-quite-Rhymin’ Simon

When my friend Rebecca Jones interviewed Poet Laureate Simon Armitage at the Oxford LitFest

‘What difference can a poet make?’,

she asks as, ‘neath that famous dome

they gaily banter back and forth.

To start with synecdoche opaque

and weave a web, a honeycomb

of images and meanings worth

a thousand words of leaden prose?

'Makes nothing happen', Auden said;

‘ingenious’ was Newton’s take –

though ‘nonsense’ all the same. For those

prepared to overlook, forget

some dodgy friends, for old times’ sake

the Laureate quotes Ezra Pound

on metaphor, enabling us

to sense and feel, through abstract art

the sights and smells of worlds around.

To blossoms, then, his animus

for new collection, set apart

from modern verse by use of rhyme;

or assonance, his fav’rite form

which puts the audience astir.

And at the end, they wait in line

for author-graphs, bestowed with charm –

which leaves the afternoon’s true star…

To me.