Simon Armitage

Poems

Poem 1: 'It Ain't What You Do It's What It Does to You'

Extract

I have not bummed across America
with only a dollar to spare, one pair
of busted Levi's and a bowie knife.
I have lived with thieves in Manchester.

Location

This poem is read on a hillside above Armitage's home town of Marsden near Huddersfield, a few hundred yards from the small terraced house where Armitage grew up and where his parents still live. It is a rainy place, nestling just beneath the Pennine Moors: the last town in Yorkshire on the A62 before you go up and 'over the top' into Lancashire, towards Manchester. Just before the poem is read we see Armitage skimming stones on Butterley Reservoir. The 'Black Moss' mentioned in the poem is a similar but smaller reservoir high up on the moors above Marsden.

Summary

This poem tells us a lot about how Armitage feels about the world and his place in it, and what he wants to write poetry about. He describes some conventionally exciting activities which he hasn't done - 'bummed across America', 'padded through the Taj Mahal', 'perched on the lip of a light-aircraft' - and then describes some apparently quite ordinary things which he has done - 'lived with thieves in Manchester', 'held the wobbly head of a boy / at the day centre', 'skimmed flat stones' - which he feels to be just as important in their own way for his life and his poetry. The final stanza suggests that he is really interested in those feelings and sensations that are so delicate and hard to pin down that language is barely adequate to describe them.

It is an immensely tender, humble poem that suggests he values what is around him, what touches him, and makes myths from such things. He doesn't wish he were someone else. This is a personal poem: the 'I' in the poem is not a personification. The voice is that of Armitage himself. It is a carefully crafted statement of the poet's confidence in his own character and feelings.

What Simon Armitage Said

'This poem... is my kind of reminder to myself - a sort of manifesto - about what I think poetry can do, what it can mean to people and why I believe in it.

'I'm saying that the ordinary can be absolutely miraculous and it's really about how you perceive things, not about the things that you do.

'Language will always be inadequate to describe physical sensations - it's always a subtitle - but it was the nearest I could get to trying to describe the way I felt when I saw something that really really got to me.'

Simon Armitage - Passwords 1998