This poem is a sonnet written as a dramatic monologue in the voice of a man who would be considered a subversive in the context of a stratified, class based society. There is a clear political message informing the poem and the final line makes it quite clear that when someone is intent on righting what he or she believes to be injustice, they are unlikely to be overt in their methods and neither will they necessarily rely on purely political processes but will use force if they feel no other means will be effective.
The persona presented in the poem clearly holds the aristocracy in contempt. The opening nine lines form a single sentence that reads as a ranting invective against everything he loathes about the upper class. His assessment of these people as “Those bastards in their mansions” is uncompromisingly direct. The fact that they “shriek” tunes the reader’s ear into what he speaker clearly thinks is class hysteria. In his tirade he refers to all the aspects of the aristocratic lifestyle he seems to despise, ranging from “dogs” to “ditches” and “lawns”. The speaker thinks that the people he dislikes are paranoiac in their belief that he is intent on infiltrating their lives. He presents himself as being innocuous by saying that he could pose no threat in “stockinged feet and threadbare britches” (line 4). The word “britches” sets the poem in the historical past. The speaker clearly resents his “threadbare life” as is sardonic in his attack that sneers at the upper class for underestimating him, caricaturing their fear that he might steal “the gift of fire from their burning torches” (line 6). They are right about one thing, though. He would like to distribute the basic right to “heat and light” to ordinary people. He goes on to say that the way the rich behave towards him suggests that they suspect him of telling their inferiors how to escape iron handcuffs and ankle irons and how to turn these badges of enslavement into weapons of revolt. It is the opposite idea of the biblical “turning swords into ploughshares”. The persona in the poem clearly feels threatened and avoids being “sniffed out” by hunting dogs or “picked at by their eagles”. He decides to take the guerrilla approach and bide his time until he will be able to do something decisive: “me, I stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14). Armitage chooses to conclude the sonnet, not with a traditional rhyming couplet but with a half line for the thirteenth and then a separate single line for the conclusion, delaying the volta a line later than is usual in, for example, a Shakespearian sonnet. The physical distance between lines 13 and 14 on the page is indicative of the gulf between the classes of people presented in the poem.
Although Armitage uses language associated with the class structure of a time well before the time of the poem’s writing, it is important to remember that there is still an aristocracy in Britain that some people think is as reprehensible in its wallowing in inherited privilege as it always has been. Those who grow used to their positions of privilege should not persist in complacency because one day they may be given a very nasty surprise by someone who may “stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14)
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Michael Woods writes about Those Bastards in Their Mansions
This poem is a sonnet written as a dramatic monologue in the voice of a man who would be considered a subversive in the context of a stratified, class based society. There is a clear political message informing the poem and the final line makes it quite clear that when someone is intent on righting what he or she believes to be injustice, they are unlikely to be overt in their methods and neither will they necessarily rely on purely political processes but will use force if they feel no other means will be effective.
The persona presented in the poem clearly holds the aristocracy in contempt. The opening nine lines form a single sentence that reads as a ranting invective against everything he loathes about the upper class. His assessment of these people as “Those bastards in their mansions” is uncompromisingly direct. The fact that they “shriek” tunes the reader’s ear into what he speaker clearly thinks is class hysteria. In his tirade he refers to all the aspects of the aristocratic lifestyle he seems to despise, ranging from “dogs” to “ditches” and “lawns”. The speaker thinks that the people he dislikes are paranoiac in their belief that he is intent on infiltrating their lives. He presents himself as being innocuous by saying that he could pose no threat in “stockinged feet and threadbare britches” (line 4). The word “britches” sets the poem in the historical past. The speaker clearly resents his “threadbare life” as is sardonic in his attack that sneers at the upper class for underestimating him, caricaturing their fear that he might steal “the gift of fire from their burning torches” (line 6). They are right about one thing, though. He would like to distribute the basic right to “heat and light” to ordinary people. He goes on to say that the way the rich behave towards him suggests that they suspect him of telling their inferiors how to escape iron handcuffs and ankle irons and how to turn these badges of enslavement into weapons of revolt. It is the opposite idea of the biblical “turning swords into ploughshares”. The persona in the poem clearly feels threatened and avoids being “sniffed out” by hunting dogs or “picked at by their eagles”. He decides to take the guerrilla approach and bide his time until he will be able to do something decisive: “me, I stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14). Armitage chooses to conclude the sonnet, not with a traditional rhyming couplet but with a half line for the thirteenth and then a separate single line for the conclusion, delaying the volta a line later than is usual in, for example, a Shakespearian sonnet. The physical distance between lines 13 and 14 on the page is indicative of the gulf between the classes of people presented in the poem.
Although Armitage uses language associated with the class structure of a time well before the time of the poem’s writing, it is important to remember that there is still an aristocracy in Britain that some people think is as reprehensible in its wallowing in inherited privilege as it always has been. Those who grow used to their positions of privilege should not persist in complacency because one day they may be given a very nasty surprise by someone who may “stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14)
The persona presented in the poem clearly holds the aristocracy in contempt. The opening nine lines form a single sentence that reads as a ranting invective against everything he loathes about the upper class. His assessment of these people as “Those bastards in their mansions” is uncompromisingly direct. The fact that they “shriek” tunes the reader’s ear into what he speaker clearly thinks is class hysteria. In his tirade he refers to all the aspects of the aristocratic lifestyle he seems to despise, ranging from “dogs” to “ditches” and “lawns”. The speaker thinks that the people he dislikes are paranoiac in their belief that he is intent on infiltrating their lives. He presents himself as being innocuous by saying that he could pose no threat in “stockinged feet and threadbare britches” (line 4). The word “britches” sets the poem in the historical past. The speaker clearly resents his “threadbare life” as is sardonic in his attack that sneers at the upper class for underestimating him, caricaturing their fear that he might steal “the gift of fire from their burning torches” (line 6). They are right about one thing, though. He would like to distribute the basic right to “heat and light” to ordinary people. He goes on to say that the way the rich behave towards him suggests that they suspect him of telling their inferiors how to escape iron handcuffs and ankle irons and how to turn these badges of enslavement into weapons of revolt. It is the opposite idea of the biblical “turning swords into ploughshares”. The persona in the poem clearly feels threatened and avoids being “sniffed out” by hunting dogs or “picked at by their eagles”. He decides to take the guerrilla approach and bide his time until he will be able to do something decisive: “me, I stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14). Armitage chooses to conclude the sonnet, not with a traditional rhyming couplet but with a half line for the thirteenth and then a separate single line for the conclusion, delaying the volta a line later than is usual in, for example, a Shakespearian sonnet. The physical distance between lines 13 and 14 on the page is indicative of the gulf between the classes of people presented in the poem.
Although Armitage uses language associated with the class structure of a time well before the time of the poem’s writing, it is important to remember that there is still an aristocracy in Britain that some people think is as reprehensible in its wallowing in inherited privilege as it always has been. Those who grow used to their positions of privilege should not persist in complacency because one day they may be given a very nasty surprise by someone who may “stick to the shadows, carry a gun” (line 14)
Michael Woods writes about I've Made Out a Will
In another sonnet taken from Book of Matches, Armitage writes in the voice of someone who has resolved, by making a will, to donate all his organs, save his heart to the National Health Service. Since this is legally binding, he is clearly in earnest.
Body parts are humorously described interchangeably with engine parts, foods and clock mechanisms. The brain is self deprecatingly “a loaf”. We are familiar with the heart as a “ticker” and we are presented with a welter of other body parts compared to other things. The blood is “a gallon of bilberry soup”, the skeleton a “chassis or cage or cathedral of bone” (lines 6-7)
The persona’s repeated insistence that his heart should be left alone “but not the heart” (line 8) and “but not the pendulum” (line 13) is emphatic. It seems that he may see the heart in a traditional way as the repository of feeling. Alternatively, it may just be an act to deliberately withhold the most sought after organ for transplant. So, in seeming to be entirely magnanimous, the speaker may not be rather curmudgeonly in life and one suspects that he will be so in a posthumous sense, too.
Body parts are humorously described interchangeably with engine parts, foods and clock mechanisms. The brain is self deprecatingly “a loaf”. We are familiar with the heart as a “ticker” and we are presented with a welter of other body parts compared to other things. The blood is “a gallon of bilberry soup”, the skeleton a “chassis or cage or cathedral of bone” (lines 6-7)
The persona’s repeated insistence that his heart should be left alone “but not the heart” (line 8) and “but not the pendulum” (line 13) is emphatic. It seems that he may see the heart in a traditional way as the repository of feeling. Alternatively, it may just be an act to deliberately withhold the most sought after organ for transplant. So, in seeming to be entirely magnanimous, the speaker may not be rather curmudgeonly in life and one suspects that he will be so in a posthumous sense, too.
Michael Woods writes about Hitcher
This blackly comic poem captures beautifully the way in which someone who feels they might have lived their life in a way that is not constrained by the conventional demands of work and “getting and spending” (as Wordsworth put it) takes revenge on a hitchhiker who has managed just that by attacking him and throwing him out of his car whilst it is moving quickly enough for him to be in “third gear”.
The choice of a dramatic monologue helps Armitage to articulate the imagined thoughts of the man who feels he has missed out on the free lifestyle that only requires “just a toothbrush and the good earth for a bed” (line 8).
Another way of reading the poem is in strictly metaphorical terms wherein the hitcher may well be the speaker himself remembering himself as a before he was enslaved a conventional working life. He may be denying that another side of him actually existed by saying that he and the hitcher are not exactly the same age.
The speaker in the poem is clearly worried about being given the sack from work when he hears an uncompromising message on his telephone answering machine and this is the italicised line 3. He “thumbed a lift” to where his car was parked. This is puzzling because it suggests that he, too, may be seen as a hitcher.
He then described picking up a hitcher in Leeds, a man who was “following the sun from west to east” (line 7), suggesting that his life is dictated by natural rhythms, no the mechanical interruptions of an answering machine or the demands of work. The hitcher quotes the 1960s radical folk singer, Bob Dylan by saying that the truth is “blowin’ in the wind”, / or round the next bend.” (lines 8-9). This incenses the speaker as he resents being reminded of the fact that he is not as free as this man and neither does he seem to have the courage to be like him.
In a shocking display of violence he says, “I let him have it”, going on to detail attacking the hitcher with a “krooklok”, something designed to secure a car’s steering wheel and never intended for use as a weapon. In saying that he “let him out” (line 17) we understand that he means that he pushed him out deliberately. This is an appalling act on top of the head butt and six blows to the face with the krooklok mentioned earlier.
The remainder of the incident is reported as a reflection in the speaker’s rear view mirror. He is described as “bouncing off the kerb” (line 18). The speaker seems utterly unconcerned by this and casually reports, “We were the same age, give or take a week.” His brutality is contrasted with the gentleness of the hitcher who “liked the breeze / to run its fingers / through his hair” (lines 20-22). The speaker then fixes the time of the incident precisely by relaying the weather forecast to which he has clearly been listening on his car radio. This compounds his appalling lack of concerns and the fact that he can be so self absorbed as to observe, “The outlook for the day was moderate to fair” (line 23). This is dreadfully shocking as it uses the language of the shipping forecast to make clear that the death of the hitcher has not spoiled the day; quite the opposite in fact – things could get better.
The concluding statement leaves the reader in no doubt that the speaker is utterly amoral: “Stitch that, I remember thinking, / you can walk from there.” (lines 24-5). The implication is that the hitcher will never be walking anywhere again, even though we are certain that he has died. As mentioned earlier in this commentary, it could be that the speaker has to leave his former self behind and has described this in terms of a murder to draw attention to the effects of a conventional life on the average working person. This may not be acceptable as an interpretation so it is important to arrive at your own conclusion.
The choice of a dramatic monologue helps Armitage to articulate the imagined thoughts of the man who feels he has missed out on the free lifestyle that only requires “just a toothbrush and the good earth for a bed” (line 8).
Another way of reading the poem is in strictly metaphorical terms wherein the hitcher may well be the speaker himself remembering himself as a before he was enslaved a conventional working life. He may be denying that another side of him actually existed by saying that he and the hitcher are not exactly the same age.
The speaker in the poem is clearly worried about being given the sack from work when he hears an uncompromising message on his telephone answering machine and this is the italicised line 3. He “thumbed a lift” to where his car was parked. This is puzzling because it suggests that he, too, may be seen as a hitcher.
He then described picking up a hitcher in Leeds, a man who was “following the sun from west to east” (line 7), suggesting that his life is dictated by natural rhythms, no the mechanical interruptions of an answering machine or the demands of work. The hitcher quotes the 1960s radical folk singer, Bob Dylan by saying that the truth is “blowin’ in the wind”, / or round the next bend.” (lines 8-9). This incenses the speaker as he resents being reminded of the fact that he is not as free as this man and neither does he seem to have the courage to be like him.
In a shocking display of violence he says, “I let him have it”, going on to detail attacking the hitcher with a “krooklok”, something designed to secure a car’s steering wheel and never intended for use as a weapon. In saying that he “let him out” (line 17) we understand that he means that he pushed him out deliberately. This is an appalling act on top of the head butt and six blows to the face with the krooklok mentioned earlier.
The remainder of the incident is reported as a reflection in the speaker’s rear view mirror. He is described as “bouncing off the kerb” (line 18). The speaker seems utterly unconcerned by this and casually reports, “We were the same age, give or take a week.” His brutality is contrasted with the gentleness of the hitcher who “liked the breeze / to run its fingers / through his hair” (lines 20-22). The speaker then fixes the time of the incident precisely by relaying the weather forecast to which he has clearly been listening on his car radio. This compounds his appalling lack of concerns and the fact that he can be so self absorbed as to observe, “The outlook for the day was moderate to fair” (line 23). This is dreadfully shocking as it uses the language of the shipping forecast to make clear that the death of the hitcher has not spoiled the day; quite the opposite in fact – things could get better.
The concluding statement leaves the reader in no doubt that the speaker is utterly amoral: “Stitch that, I remember thinking, / you can walk from there.” (lines 24-5). The implication is that the hitcher will never be walking anywhere again, even though we are certain that he has died. As mentioned earlier in this commentary, it could be that the speaker has to leave his former self behind and has described this in terms of a murder to draw attention to the effects of a conventional life on the average working person. This may not be acceptable as an interpretation so it is important to arrive at your own conclusion.
Grace Nichols writes about Hurricane Hits England
The poem, Hurricane Hits England, came about as a result of an actual hurricane or great storm, as some people liked to call it, that did hit England back in 1987. Millions of trees came down across England, especially on the South coast where I live. I remember walking around the parks the day after the hurricane and feeling very moved by the sight of all those uprooted trees. They seemed like beached whales to me, huge murdered creatures.
Because I’d never associated hurricanes with England (a regular Caribbean phenomenon) the manifestation of one in England took on a deep significance for me. It was as if some invisible but potent connection had taken place between the two landscapes. As if the voices of the old gods from Africa and the Caribbean were in the winds of the hurricane as it raged around Sussex.
The gods mentioned in the poem are all associated with storm-weather. Huracan, for example, is the Carib god of Hurricane, and the Caribbean gets its name from the native Carib Indians. Shango is the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning; Oya, the Yoruba goddess of the winds represents sweeping change; Hattie, is the name of a hurricane that caused great damage and loss of life in the Caribbean and central America in 1961.
Of course you don’t know how a poem is going to turn out until you’ve written it. You might have a rhythmical notion in mind and images such as ‘whales’ or ‘crusted roots’ but in the actual act of writing, a lot of different things are happening; sub-conscious connections are being made; metaphors formed such as - the howling ship of the wind. The poem seems to have a mind of its own and also becomes a process of discovery or surprise for the poet.
Now that I’ve written Hurricane Hits England, I can see for example that it has an incantatory trance-like quality about it, as if the woman seems possessed by the winds and by the gods she calls on. Although the opening stanza of the poem is in the third person -
took a hurricane to bring her closer to the landscape
- in the rest of the poem she speaks in the first person –
come to break the frozen lake in me
- as if the hurricane has broken down all barriers between her and the English landscape.
In some mysterious way, it seems as if the old gods have not deserted her completely, connecting her both to the Caribbean and to England which is now her home. Indeed to the wider planet as she asserts –
the earth is the earth is the earth.
Because I’d never associated hurricanes with England (a regular Caribbean phenomenon) the manifestation of one in England took on a deep significance for me. It was as if some invisible but potent connection had taken place between the two landscapes. As if the voices of the old gods from Africa and the Caribbean were in the winds of the hurricane as it raged around Sussex.
The gods mentioned in the poem are all associated with storm-weather. Huracan, for example, is the Carib god of Hurricane, and the Caribbean gets its name from the native Carib Indians. Shango is the Yoruba god of thunder and lightning; Oya, the Yoruba goddess of the winds represents sweeping change; Hattie, is the name of a hurricane that caused great damage and loss of life in the Caribbean and central America in 1961.
Of course you don’t know how a poem is going to turn out until you’ve written it. You might have a rhythmical notion in mind and images such as ‘whales’ or ‘crusted roots’ but in the actual act of writing, a lot of different things are happening; sub-conscious connections are being made; metaphors formed such as - the howling ship of the wind. The poem seems to have a mind of its own and also becomes a process of discovery or surprise for the poet.
Now that I’ve written Hurricane Hits England, I can see for example that it has an incantatory trance-like quality about it, as if the woman seems possessed by the winds and by the gods she calls on. Although the opening stanza of the poem is in the third person -
took a hurricane to bring her closer to the landscape
- in the rest of the poem she speaks in the first person –
come to break the frozen lake in me
- as if the hurricane has broken down all barriers between her and the English landscape.
In some mysterious way, it seems as if the old gods have not deserted her completely, connecting her both to the Caribbean and to England which is now her home. Indeed to the wider planet as she asserts –
the earth is the earth is the earth.
Imtiaz Dharker - Blessing
I was working on a project, filming for Unicef in Dharavi, a huge colony of migrants in Mumbai, India. These migrants come from villages all over India, hoping to make a better life in the city. The city is unable or unwilling to cope with their needs, but they make the most of whatever little they have. Working with the people who lived there, especially the children, I often felt I saw more goodness and human kindness in the slum than I had found in temples, mosques and churches.
One day in May, one of the hottest, driest months, the mains water pipe burst. It was a moment of pure joy for the people in the slum, because it gave them access to water that was normally rationed or controlled. The water was like an unexpected gift.
What I try to do in the poem is suggest first of all how dry it is, using hard sounds and short factual sentences like, ‘The skin cracks like a pod’. The people living in the slum can only ‘imagine the drip of (water)’ as if it were ‘the voice of a kindly god.’ The god here is deliberately written with a small ‘g’ because the kindly god could be from any religion. People in need don’t ask where kindness comes from.
‘The municipal pipe bursts’. I use the word ‘municipal’ to signal the bureaucracy that rations water to migrants. In contrast to this, when the pipe bursts, they are all united by the blessing of water, as if the slum has become a holy place. The imagined ‘small splash echo in a tin mug’ becomes a rush of fortune. The people rushing out of the huts become ‘a congregation’.
There is another layer of imagery, ‘silver crashes to the ground’ because the water arriving is like currency to them, and also because that is how water looks in the sunlight.
There are different income levels even in a slum, suggested by ‘pots, brass, copper, aluminium, plastic buckets, frantic hands’ but here they come together democratically, united by their urgency.
In Indian villages there is often a caste distinction where some people are not allowed to use the same well as others because they are supposedly ‘lower caste’. In the city these distinctions can be forgotten, especially in a joyful moment like this.
Most of all, the blessing is for the children. The water turns to ‘liquid sun’, the light catches the sharp angles of their bodies, ‘their highlights polished to perfection’. The sound changes through the poem from hard to liquid to suggest the rush of water. The lines become longer and more breathless, then slow down at the end, almost as if a piece of film has gone into slow-motion to let the children play and scream for joy in the water a little longer.
At the end I wanted to suggest the tenderness of the ‘kindly god’ towards the children, ‘the blessing sings’, but there is also the awareness of how fragile these human beings are, with ‘their small bones’. The poem describes a happy uplifting moment, but there are some indications that this ‘blessing’ is temporary.
One day in May, one of the hottest, driest months, the mains water pipe burst. It was a moment of pure joy for the people in the slum, because it gave them access to water that was normally rationed or controlled. The water was like an unexpected gift.
What I try to do in the poem is suggest first of all how dry it is, using hard sounds and short factual sentences like, ‘The skin cracks like a pod’. The people living in the slum can only ‘imagine the drip of (water)’ as if it were ‘the voice of a kindly god.’ The god here is deliberately written with a small ‘g’ because the kindly god could be from any religion. People in need don’t ask where kindness comes from.
‘The municipal pipe bursts’. I use the word ‘municipal’ to signal the bureaucracy that rations water to migrants. In contrast to this, when the pipe bursts, they are all united by the blessing of water, as if the slum has become a holy place. The imagined ‘small splash echo in a tin mug’ becomes a rush of fortune. The people rushing out of the huts become ‘a congregation’.
There is another layer of imagery, ‘silver crashes to the ground’ because the water arriving is like currency to them, and also because that is how water looks in the sunlight.
There are different income levels even in a slum, suggested by ‘pots, brass, copper, aluminium, plastic buckets, frantic hands’ but here they come together democratically, united by their urgency.
In Indian villages there is often a caste distinction where some people are not allowed to use the same well as others because they are supposedly ‘lower caste’. In the city these distinctions can be forgotten, especially in a joyful moment like this.
Most of all, the blessing is for the children. The water turns to ‘liquid sun’, the light catches the sharp angles of their bodies, ‘their highlights polished to perfection’. The sound changes through the poem from hard to liquid to suggest the rush of water. The lines become longer and more breathless, then slow down at the end, almost as if a piece of film has gone into slow-motion to let the children play and scream for joy in the water a little longer.
At the end I wanted to suggest the tenderness of the ‘kindly god’ towards the children, ‘the blessing sings’, but there is also the awareness of how fragile these human beings are, with ‘their small bones’. The poem describes a happy uplifting moment, but there are some indications that this ‘blessing’ is temporary.
Imtiaz Dharker talks about This Room
In the poem ‘This room’ I wanted to suggest first of all that some kind of constriction is suddenly falling away. The walls of the room could mean different things to different people, and I hope when you read the poem you will find something in it that you can relate to your own life. Very often people try to trap us inside the box of a word, a label, a definition or an expectation. The box could even be self-imposed, our own limited idea of ourselves, the structures we build up around ourselves to keep ourselves ‘safe’ – nationality, religion, social barriers that keep others out.
The poem is about a moment when the structure falls away. The room is personified. It breaks out of itself, out of something suffocating. The image of ‘cracking through its own walls’ could suggest an egg and something about to be born into the light. The lines are short and broken, the sounds sharp.
Instead of falling, the everyday objects in the room take flight to unknown possibilities. ‘No-one is looking for the door’ because doors have become irrelevant. There is no need for one conventional exit when so many openings have appeared.
Perhaps I was working towards the idea that a person or a whole culture actually becomes stronger by opening up to the outside instead of closing inward.
The poem ends with a feeling of amused dislocation and a final moment of celebration in the last lines
‘In all this excitement, I’m wondering where
I’ve left my feet, and why
my hands are outside, clapping.’
(Just an extra note: I started writing this poem when a ceiling in my house in Bombay actually fell down. I should have felt terrible about it but I didn’t. Afterwards I gave away all the things I owned in the room and that gave me a great feeling of freedom).
You could also see this as a poem about writing a poem, when the writer steps away from an experience and looks at it from the outside, from an odd angle. This is the moment of celebration.
As often happens at one of the Poetry Live! days, a student added something else to the poem. She said the words ‘this room’ could apply to the room of the title and also to the ‘room’, the space, at the end of the poem.
That’s an example of how important you are as the reader and how a poem can grow in your reading of it.
The poem is about a moment when the structure falls away. The room is personified. It breaks out of itself, out of something suffocating. The image of ‘cracking through its own walls’ could suggest an egg and something about to be born into the light. The lines are short and broken, the sounds sharp.
Instead of falling, the everyday objects in the room take flight to unknown possibilities. ‘No-one is looking for the door’ because doors have become irrelevant. There is no need for one conventional exit when so many openings have appeared.
Perhaps I was working towards the idea that a person or a whole culture actually becomes stronger by opening up to the outside instead of closing inward.
The poem ends with a feeling of amused dislocation and a final moment of celebration in the last lines
‘In all this excitement, I’m wondering where
I’ve left my feet, and why
my hands are outside, clapping.’
(Just an extra note: I started writing this poem when a ceiling in my house in Bombay actually fell down. I should have felt terrible about it but I didn’t. Afterwards I gave away all the things I owned in the room and that gave me a great feeling of freedom).
You could also see this as a poem about writing a poem, when the writer steps away from an experience and looks at it from the outside, from an odd angle. This is the moment of celebration.
As often happens at one of the Poetry Live! days, a student added something else to the poem. She said the words ‘this room’ could apply to the room of the title and also to the ‘room’, the space, at the end of the poem.
That’s an example of how important you are as the reader and how a poem can grow in your reading of it.
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