Magnetic Field: The Marsden Poems

by Simon Armitage

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 89

Synopsis:

Growing up in Marsden among the hills of West Yorkshire, Simon Armitage has always associated his early poetic experiences with the night-time view from his bedroom window, those 'private, moonstruck observations' and the clockwork comings and goings in the village providing rich subject matter for his first poems. Decades on, that window continues to operate as both framework and focal point for the writing, the vastness of the surrounding moors always at his shoulder and forming a constant psychological backdrop, no matter how much time has elapsed and how distant those experiences.

Magnetic Field brings together Armitage's Marsden poems, from his very first pamphlet to new work from a forthcoming collection. It offers personal insight into a preoccupation that shows no signs of fading, and his perspective on a locality he describes as 'transcendent and transgressive', a genuinely unique region forming a frontier territory between many different worlds. Magnetic Field also invites questions about the forging of identity, the precariousness of memory, and our attachment to certain places and the forces they exert.

I remember liking some of Simon Armitage’s poems, so I was surprised that I didn’t really connect with or enjoy a single one in this collection! It’s deeply rooted in place, being a collection of his poems about his childhood home, and it’s not a picture I connect with myself, so perhaps that’s part of it… though really, I didn’t get a sense of warmth or place from it at all.

Maybe I misremembered and I’m just not a fan of Armitage’s work — I’m not totally giving up, I think I remember one of his other collections, so I’ll see if the library has it and I’ll give that a shot, but… sadly, it might just not be my thing.

It is a nice collection though, with some black-and-white images added and an introduction explaining why a collection of poems about Marsden, and what the place has meant to him.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)