Is poetry just for “clever dicks and posers”? That was how it was seen, Simon Armitage once recollected, by some of his peers at school. Writing in the Guardian in 2012, Armitage was most c o ncerned that poetry should not be categorized as “something solid, traditional and worthy” – “something belonging to the establishment, a yardstick against which most people won’t measure up”.
Nor should it serve, in the poet’s view, as a “byword for Englishness” – “that is, grist for the spoken English competition, in which students at my school were expected to stand on a stage and chew their way through ‘The Lady of Shalott’ in a feigned and foreign RP accent”.
It was the “noises” emanating at the time from the Department for Education that alarmed Armitage; he wanted poetry to have no part in “Michael Gove’s master plan”. Not if the then head of the DfE had in mind something involving a return to “traditional values” and a “learning by rote” dystopia. But the poet could imagine an alternative course: “If, on the other hand, children are allowed to find the poems that fit their voices or appeal to their imaginations and their cultural inclinations, then I’m on board”.
Five years after his appointment as poet laureate, Armitage is most definitely on board. Last week he welcomed the award of £5 million for the establishment of a new “National Poetry Centre” in West Yorkshire; the centre is to be built in Leeds, where Armitage teaches at the university, on the site of a disused nightclub. This “huge step forward” comes courtesy of the Department of Levelling Up – run by a certain Mr Gove.
Surely no feigned or foreign accents were heard in the course of the necessary conversations about securing government funding? “We met the Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove recently”, reported Ruth Pitt, the poetry centre’s chair, “and were struck by his understanding of the value of poetry to inspire people and provide a platform for self-expression, irrespect ive of their educational background or experiences.” Poetry, all must have agreed, is “an important part of our national identity – and the National Poetry Centre will give poetry its very own dedicated national cultural centre at last”.
The National Poetry Centre – which will offer a “space for events, study areas, exhibitions, workshops, open-mic nights, a library and archives” – is due to open around the end of 2027. By then Armitage will be nearing the end of his laureateship – a gig that was once for life, but, with the appointment of Andrew Motion in 1999, became fixed as a decade’s worth of writing odes to royal babies (if the incumbent felt moved so to do) and acting as a kind of beige ambassador for verse. Sir Andrew entered into the spirit of the thing – the latter aspect of the thing, that is – by co-founding the Poetry Archive
