The “remains” of the man are what is left in the narrator’s head, “dug in behind enemy lines”, the memories of the event and of the man that torture the narrator. Notice, again, the pervasiveness of the enemy, the constant presence of him; even when he closes his eyes, he can see him, and one can take into account how often and how tiring it must be to live with it day in and day out, to know that whenever there is a pause, one will see monsters; that edge of desperation that was so prevalent in the earlier part of the poem deepens here, becomes sharper, as the reader fully starts to understand what the speaker’s life must be like. He takes my hand and says, Now I can die in peace. ‘Remains’ then moves onto the effects of these actions: ‘so we’ve hit this looter a dozen times/ and he’s there on the ground, sort of inside out’ – once more, note how the colloquial tone of the poem helps to give us an idea of the speaker. Along the route he stopped to give poetry readings, often in exchange for donations of money, food or accommodation, despite the rejection of the free life seen in his 1993 poem "Hitcher", and has written a book about his journey, called Walking Home.[9]. [13], Armitage also writes for radio, television, film and stage. Define remains. He published Zoom! he’s here in my head when I close my eyes. It pulls the reader in and makes them a part of the happening, rather than keeping them to one side and making them experience the poem from a removed point of view. "Remains" was published by the British poet Simon Armitage in 2008 as part of his collection The Not Dead, a series of war poems based on the testimonies of ex-soldiers. One of the looters appeared to possibly have a gun so they open fire. He sounds much younger, he sounds as though he’s trying to distance himself, but there is no such thing happening; despite his own words, he is almost very heavily entwined into this story, into this man’s life. Remains by Simon Armitage Remains is a poem about guilt and how one soldier deals with it. 1.1. It seems so fuzzy and determined that one could make the argument that it is standing in for a larger war, that the entire poem is a criticism of the British army’s involvement in Iraq, however that would expand the poem’s meaning to a generalist view, and take away Armitage’s main intent, which was to show the fact that soldiers have suffered for countless of years when they are pushed to fight in wars that they might not support, that they might not be fully in favor of but fight in due to other circumstances. He has made literary, history and travel programmes for BBC Radio 3 and 4; and since 1992 he has written and presented a number of TV documentaries. Village thugs. Today, veterans of any nation have the highest rate of suicide among the general populace, and a high number of them suffer from PTSD, depression, and anxiety – and although society has moved on quite far from the days where soldiers were deemed cowardly if they suffered from what was then known as ‘shellshock’, Armitage’s point, the idea behind his writing, was to show a scrap of what those soldiers had lived and suffered through to ordinary people. Historical or archaeological relics. He is the author of five stage plays, including Mister Heracles, a version of Euripides' The Madness of Heracles. 3.1. Rumi today. He was born and died in Paris. What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American (1975) 31 Letters and 13 Dreams (1977) The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing (1979) Selected Poems (1979) The Right Madness on Skye (1980) White Center (1980) Death and the Good Life (1981) [56], In November 2019 Armitage announced that he would donate his salary as poet laureate to create a new prize for a collection of poems "with nature and the environment at their heart". [11] In 2019 he was appointed Poet Laureate for ten years, following Carol Ann Duffy.[12]. ‘His remains have since been removed to the Forensic Science Centre, where an autopsy is expected to be conducted today.’ ‘Later his remains were disinterred and removed for permanent burial in France.’ ‘When the remains are removed from the hospital, normal funeral procedures must be followed.’ It is perhaps easy to believe that the soldier – armed and dangerous – would be in a position of strength, as they are usually better equipped and with superior instincts, however, the phrasing of it doesn’t seem like bragging or fondness; it is, instead, almost dull and tired. Amazing, necessary information into a excellent level of detail appropriate for anthology poetry analysises. [15], Most recently Armitage wrote the libretto for an opera scored by Scottish composer Stuart MacRae, The Assassin Tree, based on a Greek myth recounted in The Golden Bough. The Brink looked at the British relationship with Europe, as envisioned from the closest point of the mainland to the rest of the continent - Kent. I also want to find a way of including alphabet letters from other languages spoken in these islands such as Welsh, Urdu or Chinese, and to involve communities where English might not be the first language. Please continue to help us support the fight against dementia. The extant writings of a deceased person. The song is a homage to the Stanlow Oil Refinery. Here, the narrator only reiterates what he has said in the previous stanzas: what he did in the desert haunts him to this day, and he believes that he is guilty (‘his bloody life in my bloody hands’), and that there is no way out of the situation that he has found himself in, where every time he closes his eyes, he sees the man he’s killed. In the fourth stanza, the poem’s form – which has, until this point, been slow-paced and more or less regular – disintegrates into a mess of half-formed phrases, stream-of-consciousness writing, as the speaker recalls what he sees every time he blinks, which is this ‘he bursts again through the doors of the bank’. We only have his word for it, his recollection, and that recollection has been strained through drink and drug and time. War has ruled British politics for so long that it is hardly surprising that it has fleshed out into other areas as well. [54][55], As of December 2020[update] Armitage is working with Brian Hill on a documentary with the working title Where Did The World Go?, which "examines life and loss in lockdown and binds the whole narrative with a new, overarching poem from Armitage". When a family moves into an old Victorian home, they discover a chest in the attic containing antiques inhabited by an evil spirit. Once more, note how young he sounds when he brings up these references to the way the looter is lying – ‘there on the ground, sort of inside out’. Every single person that visits Poem Analysis has helped contribute, so thank you for your support. Strophe II This is my son, mine own Telemachus, "Poem commissioned to celebrate national parks", "Video of Armitage reading "Fugitives" on Arnside Knott", "Lockdown: Simon Armitage writes poem about coronavirus outbreak", "Poet Laureate Simon Armitage to write lyrics to music set by Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Daniel Kidane in response to COVID-19", "Armistice Day: Centenary of Unknown Warrior burial marked", "Simon Armitage: Ode to my hero, John Keats", "No life without death, no death without life': laureate's tribute to Keats", "The Times view on the easing of lockdown: A Butterfly Yawns", "Simon Armitage: 'Nature has come back to the centre of poetry, "Simon Armitage: The Laureate's Library Tour: Fri 20 Mar 2020", "Ten year library tour for Poet Laureate Simon Armitage", "Poet Laureate Simon Armitage launches BBC podcast from his garden shed", "Desert Island Discs, Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate", "Guy Garvey's Finest Hour - Comfort To The Nation", "Simon Armitage: 'I'm quite boyish in my outlook, "To a birdwatcher, one glimpse, one moment is happiness enough", "Simon Armitage Guest DJs on Sat 26th May", "Simon Armitage wins Keats-Shelley poetry prize", "TS Eliot prize for poetry announces 'fresh, bold' shortlist", "Simon Armitage - Sheffield Hallam University", "University of Leeds awards poet Simon Armitage honorary degree", "2017 PEN America Literary Awards Winners - PEN America", "Simon Armitage wins Queen's gold medal for poetry 2018", "Mad, Wild, Hurling Tales of Odysseus' Journey", "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (BBC Documentary)", "Simon Armitage: 'It's not poetry, it's a midlife crisis, "Simon Armitage: 'They're poems because I say they are, "Simon Armitage, Oxford Poetry Professor, Finds Inspiration in the Mundane", Griffin Poetry Prize 2006 keynote speech, including audio clip, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Simon_Armitage&oldid=1015400978, Alumni of the Victoria University of Manchester, Commanders of the Order of the British Empire, Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature, Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing potentially dated statements from December 2020, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz identifiers, Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Poet, playwright, novelist, lead singer of the Scaremongers, 1989 Zoom! ‘So all three of us open fire’. Le nom Ozymandias fait référence au pharaon Ramsès II . ‘Remains’, which you can read in full here, takes place during the Iraq war, and starts in the form of an anecdote, as though the speaker has been talking about his war experiences for quite a while, and has only just gotten to this story. While working on the medieval poem The Owl and the Nightingale he invited a series of guests to visit him in his garden writing-shed. All that is left after other parts have been taken away, used up, or destroyed. All that is left of the stock of some things; remnants.quotations ▼ 4.1. They have been so reduced, and yet through the very same poem, there are flashes of pain and an almost animalistic confusion. Remains by Simon Armitage Remains is focused on a soldier haunted by a violent memory. And the fact that the stanza breaks there gives the end of it a breathless anticipation, a pause as if the soldier is recalling his memories, putting them back together from the images that have remained with him for all this time; it is as though he needs the pause, to brace himself, to try to explain to the other person what is quite going on with him. After logging in you can close it and return to this page. [57], In November 2019 Armitage announced that each spring for ten years he would spend a week touring five to seven libraries giving a one hour poetry reading and perhaps introducing a guest poet. Their video has a sound track of the poem being read by Mark Addy, while the words also appear on screen. The ‘blood-shadow’ is almost itself an omen, a realization that it – and he – won’t be forgotten, regardless of what the soldier does in the meantime, but at this stage of the poem, this is all supposition. It is also perhaps indicative of the casual way that soldiers are left to their own devices when it comes to their daily life; very few are given the appropriate level of attention and care needed to make sure that those who discharged their weapons do not have to live with the after-effects. [61][62], In May 2020 Armitage was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. Then he states, ‘then I’m home on leave. The Remains of the Day is told in the first-person narration of an English butler named Stevens. Content, ideas, language and structure are explored. Whether it works or not is uncertain, however by putting it in this poem – by specifically omitting the army as an overwhelming presence, and not showing it in any way, by not showing anyone else in the poem aside from the man who picked up the man’s guts and threw them back into his body, shows how lonely and isolated the soldier is, how desperately in need of help. [66] He is married to radio producer Sue Roberts. The prize is to be run by the Poetry School. "[36], On 12 January 2020 Armitage gave the first reading of his poem "Astronomy for Beginners", written to celebrate the bicentenary of the Royal Astronomical Society, on BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House.