Simon Armitage

Poems

Poem 5: 'Cataract Operation'

Extract

The sun comes like a head
Through last night's turtleneck.
A pigeon in the yard turns tail
And offers me a card. Any card.

Location

This poem is not included in the programme for lack of space. However, Simon Armitage did read and talk about the poem. Some of his comments are reproduced below.

Summary

'Cataract Operation' is a series of images in couplets, as if seen by the poet through his study window. Unlike the apparently matter-of-fact images of real objects in 'About His Person', these are highly polished, dazzling literary images with which the poet is playing, imitating some of his fellow poets who prize the stunning poetic image above all else. The poet decides that he does not wish to use poetic images in such a literary way, so he 'drops the blind'. He suggests that he admires the virtuosity of his colleagues while at the same time deploring their lack of content ('a company of half a dozen hens [...] looks round the courtyard / for a contact lens'). A cataract operation is of course an operation to clear the vision.

What Simon Armitage Said

'Poetry is a way of looking at the world. But you can take that way of looking at the world too far.

'I was probably looking out of the window and I probably saw a washing line but it certainly wasn't the washing line that ends up in this poem... I started fantasising about the washing line and imagining what those clothes could look like.

'I don't really think those images go anywhere; they're just a kind of literary cleverness... I drop the blind... I stop seeing the world that way. I really want to make something useful and proper out of poetry... not just show off.'

Simon Armitage - Passwords 1998