Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Adrian Mitchell makes his usual point at the beginning of this book when he says that none of the poems are to be used in examinations. People can learn them, recite them, and so on, but no-one should be made to write essays about them. There are, he adds, far too many pointless essays in circulation already. It’s a nice gesture and the poems that follow it often do their best to stay clear of the kind of writing that academics and others love to analyse. They’re friendly, funny, and written in a way that gives the impression of them having been knocked off in between doing a lot of other things. That isn’t true, of course, and Mitchell’s ease with a variety of forms and his willingness to tackle a variety of subjects come from years of experience. And a belief that poetry isn’t something precious and meant only for a specialized audience:

Perhaps I wasn’t writing for people like you
I can’t be always working for the precious few
Maybe I was writing for a child of two
I can’t write everything I do
With one eye on the paper and the other on you

You can imagine the reaction to that in certain circles, and it would be wrong to deny that among Mitchell’s “tangled jungle of daydreams, pacifist kick-boxing, blues reports, animal caresses, songs of the howling desert, and hospital jokes,” there can be a few duds. Would-be haikus and sentimental poems about dogs don’t always work, but even so it’s hard to take offense or adopt some lofty critical stance when dealing with them. They’re usually good-natured and the reader simply moves on to something else. And that’s the way to take this book, as a kind of rolling record of Mitchell’s reactions to the world around him. Some of his comments and observations are forgettable, like a journalist’s jokes and notes, but they do entertain:

When you sit
On a chair
And the chair’s
Not there
That’s the feeling I mean -
That’s the Blair.

Short, simple, easily understood, and yet making a point about a contemporary politician. There are worse ways to write poetry.