SIMON:When you say war poetry these days, people tend to presume that you're talking about the poets of the First World War. They're the last generation of trained writers, and trained soldiers. I've never been involved in a war. I'm not a soldier, I'm probably a bit of a coward, so my route, then, into writing about conflict was to talk to other people about their experiences and listen to their testimonies.
SPEAKER:After the first phase, after passionate nights, and intimate days, only then would he let me trace the frozen river which ran through his face. Only then would he let me explore the blown hinge of his lower jaw, and handle and hold the damaged porcelain collar-bone, and mind and attend the fractured rudder of shoulder blade, and finger and thumb, the parachute silk of his punctured lung. Only then could I bind the struts and climb the rungs of his broken ribs, and feel the hurt of his grazed heart. Skirting along, only then could I picture the scan, the foetus of metal beneath his chest, where the bullet had finally come to rest. Then I widen the search. Trace the scarring back to its source, to a sweating, unexploded mine buried deep in his mind. Around which every nerve in his body had tightened and closed. Then, and only then, did I come close.
SIMON:This poem is written through the experiences of a soldier called Eddie. A bullet had entered the side of his face. The bullet had ricocheted around inside his body. He wanted to talk about these injuries, and the way that they'd damaged his body and damaged his mind. But the poem's actually written from the point of view of Eddie's wife, Laura, and she's trying to find her husband, the real nature of him. And she's exploring that by following the course that this bullet has taken through his body.
SPEAKER:Only then would he let me trace the frozen river which ran through his face. Only then would he let me explore the blown hinge of his lower jaw, and handle and hold the damaged porcelain collar-bone.
SIMON:A lot of the imagery in the poem, and the language in the poem, is borrowed from military vocabulary. A lot of sort of military… ideas and words become metaphors for things going on in the body, and also things going on in the mind.
SPEAKER:Only then could I bind the struts and climb the rungs of his broken ribs, and feel the hurt of his grazed heart. Skirting along, only then could I picture the scan, the foetus of metal beneath his chest, where the bullet had finally comes to rest.
SIMON:I used the word "foetus" which I think is quite a surprising word when you come across it. I was trying to almost get that moment of shock when the bullet is actually located there.
SPEAKER:Then I widened the search. Traced the scarring back to its source, to a sweating, unexploded mine buried deep in his mind.
SIMON:A lot of people who've come back from war have real issues with their temper. Their nerves are shredded. She talks about unexploded mines. I think you could almost say that she's trying to defuse him. One thing I'm very conscious of with this kind of poem, is a responsibility to people's lives, I mean these are real people who've been involved in real conflicts, where people have been injured and died, and have killed people as well. There's a sense that you are writing elegies, that you're writing memorials to people.
SPEAKER:Then, and only then, did I come close.
Simon Armitage analyses the themes and ideas behind his war poem ‘The Manhunt’ and considers the language it uses.
His comments are accompanied by a reading of the poem, mixed with images to illustrate its meaning and documentary footage from modern conflicts.
Armitage talks about his inspiration for the poem, some of the unusual vocabulary within it and the responsibility he feels to write a suitable elegy for real people involved in warfare.
He examines the metaphor and structural devices he uses to explore the effects of conflict from a deeply personal perspective of a real soldier.
This clip is from the series Simon Armitage: Writing Poems.
Teacher Notes
Students could carry out some prior research into the condition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in people who have experienced conflict.
They could produce a one-page army dossier on the troubled subject of the poem, a soldier called Eddie, incorporating ideas from the text.
This could help students to uncover some of the military themed language in the poem.
Students could then go on to examine his wife Laura's response to the dossier (perhaps as a letter in reply to the army) and her attempts to use much more figurative language, in order to deal with the real horror of the situation.
Curriculum Notes
This clip will be relevant for teaching English Literature.
It will be relevant for teaching poetry analysis at KS3 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and Level 3 in Scotland.
This clip could also be used for teaching general poetry analytics skills at KS4/GCSE/National 5.