To express the grief and dislocation of our times, only poems will do
The great Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie published a new poem on Twitter this week, prefaced by the briefest and most heartfelt of introductions: “After a weepy morning missing folks and thinking This Will Never End, I made myself go out. Wrote a rebalancing poem. Feel better now. Hope we all will soon.” The poem begins: “Trudging again / high on the grasslands / pallid winter sunshine / scarves of mist.” The narrator steps into the shadow of a tree for a moment, hears a mistle thrush, and a crow “cawing from a pylon”. In a moment, she breathes again and her mind becomes “branchy”. It’s a deceptively simple poem, terse, raw and dense. It has the feeling of being born from sadness and frustration – and then is lit up by a fleeing connection with nature. “Trudging again” feels like its keynote – so many are indeed “trudging” through the flatness and sadness of lockdown, in the week that the UK passed the grim and unforgivable milestone of 100,000 people dead.
Jamie’s was not the only work put into the world by a British poet this week, dealing, in one way or another, with the pandemic. The UK poet laureate, Simon Armitage, read a new work on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Titled The Song Thrush and the Mountain Ash, it has its narrator trying to connect with a loved one through the window of her room in a care home, reminding her of the names – for she has forgotten them – of her favourite bird and her favourite tree. And Brian Bilston seized the anger of the moment with his poem published on Twitter, Daily Briefing (“Faith in the government has sadly died. / Ministerial integrity has sadly died.”)
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