Two months after his appointment, Simon Armitage has penned his first poem as the UK’s poet laureate: a commemoration of the 1969 moon landing, which compares the US astronauts to the Spanish explorers who conquered the Americas in the 16th century.
Armitage admitted to some nerves over whether the laureateship would bring on a case of writer’s block – former incumbent Andrew Motion said, while laureate, that he “dried up completely about five years ago and can’t write anything except to commission”. But this was not the case for the 21st poet laureate.
“I had been a little bit nervous, since I’d been approached, about whether it might affect my writing,” said Armitage, a former probation officer who will hold the role for 10 years. “But I found myself daydreaming about the moon landing, and before I knew it a few lines appeared and an idea formed … when it came down to it, [the writing] was pretty much exactly the same as always.”
His poem, Conquistadors, imagines a six-year-old Armitage trying to “coincide / the moon landing / with his first kiss”. Meanwhile Richard Nixon – “Tricky Dicky” – “clears his throat / to claim God’s estate / as man’s backyard // from the Oval Office”.
Armitage said it came to him while he was “dwelling on the memories of when I was a kid, and the moon landings, drawing parallels between something being both captivating and intoxicating, almost in a romantic way”. Philip Larkin’s description of the moon as “High and preposterous and separate – / Lozenge of love!” was another inspiration, he said, as was Robert Graves and “how he was absolutely horrified that we defiled this maternal feminist goddess with our muddy footprints”. Graves called walking on the moon “the greatest crime against humanity in 2,000 years”.
“Looking back now it seemed to be quite a macho endeavour. I had forgotten about Nixon’s speech, his telephone call,” said Armitage. (Nixon told Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong: “Because of what you have done, the heavens have become part of man’s world.”)
“It is such an arrogant assumption, the idea that something so ephemeral could ever be captured and conquered,” said Armitage.
The unnamed love, meanwhile – the poet at six is “hoping to plant his lips / on ------ ---------’s / distant face” – is “anonymised to the point of generalisation”.
“It’s more a point of, ‘your name here’,” he added.
