Poet Laureate in the Arctic
Simon Armitage is in the Arctic, to see for himself what's happening in a part of the world that's so crucial to the climate change debate, and to write new poems in response.
“Poetry has had it’s money’s worth when it comes to nature and it’s time for poetry to pay something back and to speak up for those things that can’t speak for themselves. Because as well as coming back with some solid evidence and some experience, memories and ideas; more than anything I want to come back with some poems.”
Read his article in The Guardian about his experience.
Read the poem in response to the trip, ‘The Summit’.
The Summit by Simon Armitage
When I met the glacier face to face
there was no coming together
of skin and ice,
just washy clouds and a weepy sky
floating upside down
in a silver lake, and the eyes
looking up from the water were mine.
It was hard slog
in a valley more like a Scottish Glen,
along hillsides more at home
in the English Lakes.
A day’s trek up a narrow track
between harebell and birch
and to do what:
to say the arctic looks like this
or looks like that, to breathe
its cool breath then scratch a name
in the visitors’ book
and give the glacier a human form:
tongue, body, mouth and heart …
In any event
I was too late.
Looking up from the milky pool
I saw the whiteness in retreat,
the bedraggled hem of the bridal train
heading into the heights
towards deeper winter and truer north,
trailing a stony path.
When I met the glacier face to face
there was no close encounter
of ancient snow and body heat,
just weepy clouds and a washy sky
hanging upside down
in a zinc-coloured lake, and the eyes
staring out of the water were mine.