Warping Conventions in Simon Armitage’s “Poem” Yi Lin College

On the surface Simon Armitage’s “Poem” has the structure of an English sonnet in that it consists of fourteen lines, each with ten syllables, divided into three quatrains, a couplet, and is written in iambic pentameter. Through its use of half-rhymes, punctuation, the absence of imagery and figurative language, and an overarching tone of ambiguity, “Poem” warps sonnet conventions to argue that is not possible to declare someone as either wholly good or bad.

Commonly, where sonnets are for the majority self-contained, the way in which Armitage starts “Poem” implies that there are some antecedent events unknown to the reader. The sonnet begins with “And if it snowed and snow covered the drive / he took a spade and tossed it to one side.” (1-2). It is as though the reader has just started listening to a list that has been going on before the speaker’s arrival. The sonnet lists, uninterestingly, the morally inconsistent actions of a man during his lifetime. For example, “and he always tucked his daughter up at night.” (3) is followed by “and slippered her the one time that she lied.” (4). Upon reading the first three lines, it is not difficult to assume that this poem concerns a dutiful and loving father who shovels the drive and...