Sunday Reading task-Lockdown: Pictorial Journey of a Pandemic Poem by Simon Armitage.

     Here is Hinaba Sarvaiya blog,This blog is the part of my Sunday Reading task that is given by our Prof.Dilip Barad sir.

"The Tragedy is the wreckage of a train that has been careening down the track for years."

            - Arundhati Roy:'The pandemic is a portal.'

Life of Simon Armitage:-

         Simon Robert Armitage (born 26May 1963) is an English poet, playwright and novelist. Who was appointed poet laureate on 10May 2019. He is also professor of poetry at the University of Leeds and succeeded Geoffrey Hill as Oxford Professor of poetry when he was elected to the four year part time appointment from 2015 to 2019. The recipient of numerous honors and awards, Armitage was named the Millennium Poet in 1999, a fellow of the Royal Society for literature in 2004 and a Commander of the British empire in 2010. In 2014 he was awarded the cholmondeley Award.

     

   Known for his deadpan delivery, Armitage's formally assured, often darkly comic poetry is influenced by the work of Ted Hughes, W.H.Auden, and Philip Larkin. As a reviewer for the PoetryArchive.com observed,

"With his acute eye for modern life, Armitage is an updated version of Wordsworth's 'man talking to men.'"

POET LAUREATE OF THE UNITED KINGDOM:-

    The poet laureate of the United Kingdom is an honorary position appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom, currently on the advice of the prime minister. The role does not entail any specific duties, but there is an expectation that the holder will write verse for significant national occasions. The origin of the laureateship date back to 1616 when a pension was provided to Ben Jonson but the frist official holder of the position was Jonh Dryden, appointed in 1668 by Charles II. The holder of the position as at 2021 is Simon Armitage who succeeded Carol Ann Duffy in May 2019.

     Let's discuss about the lockdown: pictorial journey of a Pandemic Poem by Simon Armitage.

     Poet laureate says society may emerge from the pandemic 'slightly slower, and wisher, at the other end.'

      Simon Armitage has written a poem to address the coronavirus and a lockdown that is slowly being implemented across the UK, saying that the art form can be consoling in times of crisis because it "asks us just to focus, and think, and be contemplative."

   A poem about two dreams:-

1. A hallucinating Dream sequence of 1665-66 plague stricken village, Eyam.

2. And an exotic dream wherein the dreamer travels back in time to Kalidasa's Meghaduta- The Cloud Messenger.

Armitage, who is at home with his family in West Yorkshire, said that "as the lockdown become more apparent and it felt like the restriction were closing in, the plague in Eyam become more and more resonant" to him.

    His poem reference Eyam's boundary stone. which contained holes that the quarantined villagers would put their money in to pay for provision from outside, and then fill with vinegar in the hope it would cleanse the coins. It also touches on the doomed romance between girl who lived in Eyam and a boy outside the village who talked to her from a distance, until she stopped coming.

     The poem was also influenced by a scene in Meghaduta in which an exile sends reassuring words to his wife in the Himalayas via a passing cloud. ( જેવી રીતે યક્ષ તેની પત્નીના પ્રેમ વિરહમાં તડપે છે, તેવી રીતે આ કોરોનકાળમાં એક મનુષ્ય યુગલ તડપે છે. મેઘદૂત કાવ્યમાં મેઘને દૂત કરીને સંદેશ પોતાની પત્નીને મોકલે છે તેવીજ પરિસ્થિતિનું નિર્માણ આ કાવ્યમાં સિમોન વ્યક્ત કરે છે.)

    "The cloud is convinced to take the message because the yaksha, which I think is sort of an attendant spirit to a God of wealth, tell him what amazing landscapes and scenery he's going to pass across. I thought it was a kind of hopeful, romantic gesture,"said Armitage.

       He thought ther was a message to be learned "about taking things easy and being patient and trusting the earth and maybe having to come through this slightly slower, and wiser, at the other end given that one thing that's accelerated the problem is our hectic lives and our proximities and the frantic ways we go about things."

     "Poetry is often about detail, even to the point where there's just somthing sacramental in the ordinary descriptions of everyday life," he said "it's unlikely that there's going to be a book of poems that are consolation against catastrophe, but just in poetry's nature, in the way it asks us to be considerate of each other and the world. In the relationship with thoughtful language, something more thoughtful occurs."

     In pandemic period so many writers, poet wrote about the poem, novel, story,ect..in current situation. I am spending their time with enriching their skills, spare time of their hobbies and one of the most accepted ways is write a something like that quote, poem, story..and reading literature. Here I presented written by me in pandemic time.

This is my poem.  This time we all are quarantine in our homes because of the terrible spread of coronavirus in all around the world. I am write thise poem only for think. I am described the value of time, thise time was good for recalled Happy movement, spending time with family members.. સ્મરણો વાગોળવા it time to back to few years and remembering whole memory.  

Thank you!!

Words - 886