I watched last night's latest tv offering on poetry with all the horror of a
transfixed rabbit in the car's lights: here was Simon Armitage 'doing' a 60
minute programme on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for a national tv
channel; here were real locations, in the Staffordshire Roaches and the Dee
Valley of North Wales that I knew, that I'd been too myself; here was
Armitage quoting his fluent and unobtrusively alliterating translation,
which is reasonable enough on the screen, if not quite so on the page; here
were shots of anoraks, warm pints of bitter, glowing wood fires, St
Winifred's Well, Pennine villages and a working men's club; here was a
whole hour of mediaeval poetry as weekend supplement travelogue and a
gigantic advert for Simon Armitage and his book posing as information.
--
David Bircumshaw
"Nothing can be done in the face
of ordinary unhappiness" - PP
Website and A Chide's Alphabet
http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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