Putin up with poetry

Let’s spare a thought for poor old Vlad the Putin. He must be barely able to sleep these days, what with the war and all. But he also has to bear the burden of being expelled from the Eurovision Song Contest, Sainsburys changing the spelling of ‘Kiev’ to ‘Kyiv’ on its chicken Ки́їв (The New Conservative passim) and then McDonalds go and close all their health food outlets thus depriving the Russian nation of its chicken McNuggets and egg McMuffins. In breaking news, I near that ITN have pulled I’m a Celebrity from Russia, which frankly makes Russia seem like a more attractive place to live right now than the UK. As if all that weren’t enough, British Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has written a poem about the war in Ukraine. I must say that even I—war veteran that I am—and someone with their finger on the pulse just did not see that coming.

This stroke of the pen is a stroke of genius. Just think of the possibilities. The poem, heroically titled ‘Resistance’, could be read on a continuous loop over the BBC Russian World Service. That would surely demoralise the troops and make them lay down their weapons. After all, I nearly lost the will to live reading it myself. Failing that we could drop copies of the poem, airborne propaganda style, over the advancing troops; I hear that Russian Army issue toilet paper is a bit ‘rough’. Regarding ‘Resistance’, iambic pentameters it certainly isn’t. It is written in uneven sets of triplets; some stand alone and others link. Needless to say, it doesn’t rhyme. Part of one triplet reads:

False news is news

with the pity

edited out.

Beats me what that means. Answers in the comments section below.

What struck me about the poem was that I had heard about it at all. I try to avoid the BBC Radio Today programme, but I caught a snippet last week on which Mr Armitage was being interviewed about his latest ditty. I wondered if I had imagined this radio interview and fully expected, even if it were true, that I would be most unlikely to find anything about it on Google. How wrong I was. I found a full article on ‘Resistance’ and found it reproduced in full in The Guardian (where else?). We may be on the verge of nuclear war; millions of refugees are fleeing Ukraine, but a hastily written ode makes it to the news. I cannot recall his exact words but when asked by the interviewer, clearly struggling to muster enthusiasm for the interview, why he had written the poem, our Poet Laureate answered along the lines of ‘we all have to do what we can’. Indeed, we do Mr Armitage. If only ‘doing what we can’ involved some people keeping their gobs shut. So much hot air and war porn is being generated by the situation in Ukraine that this must now be considered a major contributor to global warming. Quick, call Sir Greta Attenborough-Lineker or some or other of the ‘watermelons’ (green on the outside; red on the inside) who so readily whip up hysteria about climate change.

Admittedly it must be hard not to report on the ongoing situation in Ukraine. The Covid-19 panic appears to be over and it would be too much to expect that we are not on the brink of another world catastrophe, even though we don’t really have any idea what is going on. Releasing nuclear weapons would seem like a pointless and self-destructive act by Putin and I fail to see how Russia can simultaneously be devastating Ukraine while, concomitantly, the wheels are literally coming off their invasion convoys. But I don’t doubt that Ukraine is a grim place to be right now. I feel a poem coming on. We must all do what we can. Now, what rhymes with ‘Kyiv’?

Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.